


U.S.S. Derry (i had visions of you & i)

by aceface, beepbeep (aceface)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, M/M, Pennywise (IT) Exists, The closest to an AU I will get in this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceface/pseuds/aceface, https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceface/pseuds/beepbeep
Summary: Myra has been gone for five cycles when the ship crash lands. Eddie sees it - hot and blindingly white, like a falling star. His heart leaps into his throat and for a moment, one hand clutches his chest, because it feels like a heart attack and like he’s dying all at once. But the moment passes.It couldn’t have been a heart attack, anyway. Not anymore.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 28
Kudos: 136





	U.S.S. Derry (i had visions of you & i)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Reddie Big Bang and so has amazing accompanying art work. 
> 
> [you can find vulcains_ work here and it's BEAUTIFUL AND FANTASTIC and I love Eddie's t-shirt and I really really encourage you to go view it and leave amazing comments!!](https://twitter.com/vulcains_/status/1279413393271619585)
> 
> [here is where you can find pavana-infanta's work - it's so gorgeous and moody and atmospheric, and you should also go see this, and leave amazing comments also!](https://pavana-infanta.tumblr.com/post/622719283004407808/okay-richie-says-hoarsely-he-draws-a-ragged)
> 
> i have been so lucky to be matched with two talented artists, and really encourage you to view it and say nice things.

Myra has been gone for five cycles when the ship crash lands. Eddie sees it - hot and blindingly white, like a falling star. His heart leaps into his throat and for a moment, one hand clutches his chest, because it feels like a heart attack and like he’s dying all at once. But the moment passes.

It couldn’t have been a heart attack, anyway. Not anymore.

-

The closer Eddie gets to it, the more the smell of sizzling metal sets his teeth on edge. It's still white-hot from the atmosphere and chunks of burning metal are scattered across the landing dock.He speeds up the closer he gets, taking long strides towards the escape panel. The metal wheel has broken off and Eddie isn’t sure how he’ll get in.

He knows who’s in it, of course. There’s only one person who would do this.

Eddie manages to find a window. The metal burns his knees, and he punches out the window, wrapping his hands in some cloth torn from the bottom of his shirt so he can reach in and find the handle without cutting himself on the heavy glass.

Richie. 

His eyes are open and Eddie has a moment - barely a split second - of relief until Richie winces and it all hits him at once, like an asteroid in his chest. Eddie feels - he doesn’t know what he feels. He feels _too much_ ; anger and fear, fear like he never thought he’d have again after - after -

“You’re a fucking moron,” Eddie says, and Richie doesn’t say anything - closes his eyes again briefly. Eddie refuses to feel guilty. He won’t, not after everything.

He’s still angry at Richie, furious. He _is_ , and he’s doing his best to hold onto that, even as he can feel it slowly slipping away, washed away by the tide of sheer _relief_ , and - God, he fucking loves him. He loves all his stupid friends, and their refusal to let him - become a hermit, after what happened. But there’s still an edge to his relief, even as he’s using his arm - his _other_ arm - to forcibly pull the seatbelt off Richie, easily snapping it in half.

He can do things like that now.

Richie still doesn’t say anything as he crawls out of the shuttle after Eddie, and Eddie refuses to give in to the slow panic creeping over him. Richie’s never been this quiet before for this long. It’s fucked up.

He thought that Richie was there to see him. They haven’t talked - Eddie hasn’t talked to any of them since it happened. And he knows that’s stupid - he’s been missing the calls on purpose, and maybe he - well, he didn’t dare to think this would happen. That they’d show up.

“You didn’t send a transmission,” Eddie says. “You didn’t write, you didn’t call…” He trails off, feeling uncomfortably exposed. Richie’s staring at him, and Eddie feels his hands clenching into fists. He hates him.

“Get off my ship,” Eddie says.

“It’s a station,” Richie says, “not a ship. Besides, I can’t even if I wanted to.” He kicks the gleaming pile of space junk next to him. “This baby’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“That’s what you say?” Eddie says. “I haven’t fucking heard from you in seven cycles, and you’re correcting me?”

“I know how much you like to be right all the time, Spagheds,” Richie says. “I’m doing you a favour, bro.”

Eddie clenches his fists. He closes his eyes; breathes in, and then out. Carefully, the way the old medical texts said to.

The medical texts had never encountered Richie _fucking_ Tozier, though.

“You could’ve sent _me_ a transmission,” Richie says suddenly. “It wasn’t all on me.”

“I woke up,” Eddie says, “in a strange place. Do you know what they had to do to me to save me?” He unbuttons his shirt - Richie’s watching, strangely silent - and knocks on the panel of metal which is now his chest with one hand.

“Lookin’ good, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“I am half metal,” Eddie says, his voice rising. “I have a bionic arm and a clockwork heart and - and _you weren’t there when I woke up!_ ”

“I thought you’d like it,” Richie says, his voice deceptively casual. “Most sterile environment I’ve ever seen.”

“They told me that you’d dropped me off and left,” Eddie said. “Couldn’t even wait around to see if I survived.”

“Also,” Richie says, “your heart isn’t clockwork and you know it. Clockwork hasn’t existed for about a millennium, Eds.” He reaches out to tap his finger against Eddie’s metal arm. “Does this thing have a vibrate function?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie hisses through his teeth and Richie spreads his arms wide and goes, “I would, but how can I? I’m stuck here!”

“You did this on _purpose_ ,” Eddie says. “You crashed your shitty fucking ship into my landing bay on purpose, and it’s _fucked up_.”

“Your station is pretty fucking shitty too,” Richie says. “Of all the stations, in all the world…” 

“Do _not_ fucking Casanova me,” Eddie says and Richie grins wide, says, “Casablanca, actually, Eds, but I’ll Casanova you if you let me.”

“I don’t know what that is!” Eddie shouts. “We’re not all obsessed with old movies from the fucking - Earth-age! Just stop - it’s not fair - I can’t believe you’re _here_ -”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Richie says, “that me being here is so hard for you. I didn’t mean to crash. I mean it. I didn’t _mean_ to. I just wanted to visit you!”

“But why _now_ ,” Eddie grits out and Richie shrugs with his whole body.

“I miss you,” he says quietly. “I missed you, I mean. I was worried. You didn’t join any of the holo-chats. You just went… silent. And after everything - I didn’t even know if you were _alive_ -”

“So you flew across the galaxy for me?” Eddie says, still suspicious, and Richie nods slowly - once, twice.

“I guess I did.”

Richie says it like it’s nothing - like it _means_ nothing, and Eddie wishes his heart could still speed up or skip a beat, that his body would give him the signs so he can know how he feels about it. As much as Eddie has always had a love-hate relationship with his body, he never realised how much he relied on the flesh-and-blood of it all until it was… gone.

“Well,” Eddie says, and he can’t hold it back anymore. “I - missed you, you total fucking asshole.”

Richie’s face splits into a grin, like he’d been waiting for it. “I knew you loved me, Eds. Now, where’s the holo-net? I got a simulation I’d like to run on your mom, and that’s not the only thing I’ll be running on her. Right?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Eddie says dryly. “You can fuck right off again.”

“Hey,” Richie says. He slings an arm around Eddie, tall enough to do that. It’s really unfair. Everything Eddie’s been through, and they couldn’t add a coupla extra inches? “I missed you too, dipshit. Eds, Eddie, my love. It’s been a while, am I right?”

“It’s been _seven cycles_ ,” Eddie grits out through his teeth and Richie smiles against his hair, says, “Yeah, but who’s counting?”

-

Okay, so Eddie had gone off-grid after the whole - alien thing, the second time around. It’s just, there’s aliens, and then there’s aliens that you fought on a station when you were a kid with your best friends, and then you forgot all about it. And _then_ you had to get on a shitty spaceship and go after it again. As an _adult_.

It’s a lot to process, and it’s not like he’d just had _that_. He’d also had the whole - half-man, half-metal thing, which… Honestly, he’s still not entirely sure he’s over it. Just - being one way and waking up and not recognising your _arm_ , your chest - knowing that half your insides are metal and machine now, that you’re illegal in thirty one quadrants of the galaxy, that a well-timed electro-magnetic pulse could take you out.

And on top of all _that_ , he’d had to divorce his wife and deal with the fact that - that he was missing Richie more than he was missing his heart. His real, flesh and blood heart, and he didn’t even care about _that_ as much as he cared about Richie just - ditching him - and he cared about his heart a _lot_.

Then Richie put _i'm gay_ in the holo-chat and Eddie had just put _same_ , and that had been when he’d gone into isolation, sort of, because he didn’t have enough strength left in him to check the responses to it.

So you bundle all those things on top of each other and there he was, in a tiny shitty station that he somehow loved, having a bona-fide midlife space crisis. 

He can see why Richie might have thought he’d love it; sometimes Eddie thinks that it could’ve gone either way. Sleek, gleaming metal, free from infection - that’s one way to look at it, the way Eddie tries his best to see it, on his good days.

But he’s always had a difficult relationship with his body, with the old Earth diseases and everything else that can go wrong in an incubator like the U.S.S. Derry, with the highest rate of death and disease and infection amongst all the spaceships in the America-network. 

All Eddie sees when he looks at the arm or feels the artificial beat of his heart is another way that his body is a traitor to him.

Eddie doesn’t ever, ever want Richie to know what it felt like when he woke up to find himself in the hospital, alive. The way that none of it mattered suddenly because Richie wasn’t there, and they’d said Myra was. It turned out that she wasn’t, either; that Eddie had woken up alone.

You don’t have to know you love someone to love them. Eddie knows that now.

He doesn’t want to think about the way it felt waking up like that, but not wanting to doesn’t stop it from consuming most of his waking moments. He remembers the bit before he opened his eyes, when he’d thought he might be dead, and the moments where he knew he was alive but not what had happened - when he thought that he’d been whole, in a proper med-bay somewhere, with Richie waiting just outside the doors.

Then, when images had filtered in, he still hadn’t quite realised - a stranger with long hair scraped back into a bun leaning over him, smiling, saying, “You’ve been out a while, Mr Kaspbrak.”

The walls, a dull brown - on his left, some machines, beeping and clearly recovered, some of them awkwardly welded together. Eddie had started to hyperventilate, the beeping speeding up in time with his breathing - it looked _filthy_ , it clearly wasn’t a proper med-bay - and then when he’d reached out to - he doesn’t know what - the thing that responded instead of his arm-

“Richie,” he’d managed to say, suddenly dry-mouthed. His chest was tight, but only one half of it, and Eddie was convinced that it was either heart failure or a stroke.

The man masquerading as a doctor frowned, and said, “My name’s Carson. I need you to calm down, Kaspbrak. You’ve been through a lot.”

That was when Eddie had realised that Richie wasn’t there, couldn’t be, or he’d have come bursting through the doors - that there was a lump of metal attached in place of his arm, that he was having a stroke, that nothing would ever be the same again and that most of all, Eddie was now alone in the universe.

When he had broken his arm - he could mostly remember now, although it still felt hazy around the edges - he had woken up to see all of the Losers there, piled into to the tiny med-bay, grinning faces and pushing each other around to get near his bed. He had thought that maybe that was The Bad Thing, and maybe it wasn’t so bad at all.

Now, Eddie knows - waking up alone, illegal in over thirty quadrants, made of metal and completely on his own from there on out - _that_ was The Bad Thing. And it was even worse than he’d thought it would be, as a child.

-

“You look like you’re going to say something,” Richie says, out of nowhere. They’re on the shitty threadbare couch together. Richie is sprawled over one side, legs so far apart that it honestly looks a little painful, slumped in his seat - his _posture_ , Jesus, it’s amazing he doesn’t have a permanent hump or something at this point - one hand curled around some moonshine.

It’s really shitty moonshine. Eddie isn’t a big drinker, on his own, and he’d been too embarrassed to change his delivery order after Richie arrived, like Richie might know, somehow, or overhear him - but he does have a coupla things in that it’s easy enough to brew together. It tastes like shit, but it gets the job done, if you drink enough of them.

Richie had made fun of him for a solid week, it felt like, but in spite of himself he’s somehow developed a taste for it now - when they run out, he follows Eddie around, whining until Eddie brews some more and absolutely refuses to learn how to do it himself.

It’s pretty annoying work, and part of the reason it’s so shitty is probably the fact that Eddie gets annoyed halfway through, can’t be bothered to measure stuff anymore and just eyeballs the ingredients before throwing them in, but there you are. 

“Uh,” Eddie says, startled out of his thoughts. He actually hadn’t, though he’d been thinking about it. Richie so comfortable like that; and here Eddie is, curled into the side of the sofa, metal arm pressed as far from Richie as he can get it.

Here’s what Eddie had been thinking: he really wants a hug.

It’s so embarrassing that he feels himself flushing just thinking about it, like he’s some whiny eleven year old again. And a hug had been the last fucking thing he wanted at that age, with his mother ready to press his face into her - her _breasts_ , he can say it, he’s a grown adult, for fuck’s sake - at the slightest opportunity. God, he can still feel it - that godawful floral perfume she’d insisted on wearing, her weird day-dresses, always just this side of itchy when his face was pushed against them.

Myra had been the same - Eddie had revelled in it, when she’d first left, once he’d stopped - what’s the word, sitting around and feeling sorry for himself. Malingering, or whatever - he’s not a writer, that’s Bill’s job. But he’d liked it, at first; being alone, being able to do whatever he wanted without someone saying, ‘Eddiebear, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? Don’t you want to just sit down with me and watch some television? Our favourite show’s on.’

But five cycles feels like a long time, and Eddie’s suddenly aware, now that Richie’s here, just how alone he’d been before. And Richie is tactile in a way Eddie had always thought he hated - slinging an arm around him here, pushing his cold feet into the side of Eddie’s leg there; Eddie hasn’t seen him flinch away from the metal arm, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t, if he touched it.

But God, all these little touches are worse than nothing - every time he gets close, Eddie’s skin sings. All the hairs stand up - it’s like being an addict, he figures; just one touch and he wants _more_ , wants to cling to Richie like a fucking industrial strength magnet, and just get his warmth - and just _feel_ someone. He didn’t realise how much he missed that.

But you can’t just ask someone for a hug - and it wouldn’t be a hug, Eddie wants to get so close that he feels like he’s trying to climb inside him, and that’s just - it’s weird, and more to the point, it’s obvious. And Eddie can’t let Richie know how he feels, not when Richie can’t leave, if he’s uncomfortable. Eddie doesn’t - maybe Richie wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but maybe then he would, and the last thing that Eddie would ever, ever want to do is to trap someone. So.

“‘Uhhh,’” Richie mimics. “Hey, look at me, I’m Eddie Spaghetti and I don’t know how to use my words.”

“I use my words all the time, fuckface,” Eddie snaps, but it’s half-hearted and he knows that Richie can tell. As much as Richie likes to pretend, he isn’t actually stupid.

“‘Ohh, my name’s Eduardo and I like to pretend that I don’t have feelings’,” Richie says.

“My voice isn’t that high-pitched, go fuck yourself,” Eddie says. “‘Oh, I’m Richie Tozier and I like to pretend I’m funny when really all I do are shitty impressions of people.’”

“Nice to meet you, Richie Tozier,” Richie says. “I’m Eduardo Spaghardo and I have something I want to say.”

“You’re not funny,” Eddie says, giving up on the game because he’s not going to go toe-for-toe with Richie on ‘who gets bored of impressions fastest?’. It’s Eddie, it’ll always be Eddie. “I didn’t want to say anything, but there it is. That’s what I had to tell you.”

“Eddieee,” Richie whines, poking his toes further under Eddie’s leg. “Come on, lil’ buddy, just use your words.”

“It’s stupid,” Eddie says resolutely, but he can feel himself turning red. It’s all the confirmation that there actually is something on his mind that Richie needs, throwing himself forward gleefully to rest his chin on Eddie’s shoulder.

“You can tell me,” he says directly into Eddie’s ear. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“You’ll put it in the holo-chat first chance you get,” Eddie says. “I think you’re like, physically incapable of keeping a secret.”

“I kept one pretty well for over twenty seven years,” Richie says. He does this, sometimes; jokes about the gay thing in a way where Eddie can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not.

“I wish you hadn’t,” he says, choosing to err on the side of sincerity. “I get why you did, but we love you. You know that.”

“Oh, so _now_ you can talk about your feelings?” Richie says. He pokes Eddie in the side with a toe. “C’mon, let it all out.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Eddie says, before he means to. He’s never thought of himself as being someone who needs much physical affection, if any - but he didn’t realise that he had Myra around, his mom - Richie, constantly needling him and pushing into his side. After seven cycles without it, Eddie’s more aware than ever of his body existing in isolation, aware that no one but himself and the doctor have ever touched the metal of his arm, his chest - that he’s the only one who has ever felt his mechanical heart beat.

“I didn’t know you could be embarrassed,” Richie says, like Eddie isn’t embarrassed _constantly_.

“Well,” Eddie says. He looks at his fingers; flesh interlaced with metal. “When was the last time you had a, uh. A hug?”

“Huh,” Richie says, thoughtful. He flops back against the couch, the tips of his fingers brushing Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie grits his teeth against the shiver. “Great question, actually. I dunno. Maybe like… a few cycles ago? I think a fan wanted a hug.”

“You’re just hugging strangers?” Eddie says, before he can help himself. “They could be carrying all sorts of things, they might not even wash their hands, that’s incredibly unsanitary.”

“Trashmouth fans _are_ probably disease-ridden,” Richie says. “Gave great hugs, though. What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “Did any of you guys hug me when we were all after It? Probably then, I guess.”

Richie doesn’t say anything for a few moments, just looks at him steadily. “That’s a long time.”

“I guess, yeah,” Eddie says. “It’s been a while.” He feels like they’re not just talking about hugs anymore, but he means to. “So I was just - thinking. About that.”

Richie makes a face, like he’s decided something, then opens his arms wide. “Bring it in, Kaspbrak.”

“What?” Even though it’s what Eddie wanted, he still feels weird about it - like he’s just supposed to cuddle up to Richie for no reason - like he’s _allowed_ to do that. Eddie isn’t sure he’s ever wanted what he wanted - he’s wanted what he’s _supposed_ to want; a wife to look after him, a steady job with a steady paycheck. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“Have I ever made fun of you over something that actually matters?” Richie says, then screws his face up before Eddie can get a word out. “Alright, alright - don’t answer that. Look, it’s been a while for me too, okay? I take it back; that fan actually gave shitty hugs.”

“I don’t believe you,” Eddie says. He’s not sure why he’s arguing against the thing he currently wants the most; that’s Eddie Kaspbrak for you, he thinks sullenly to himself.

“Get over here or I’ll hug you anyway,” Richie threatens. “You won’t want that. I won’t let you go for hours at a time. You might even shit yourself, and then you’ll have a total fucking meltdown.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says, “you’re disgusting.”

But in spite of that, he manages to shuffle over a little closer to Richie, and it’s worth it. Richie immediately flings his arms around and pulls him in close, until Eddie’s half laying on Richie, his back to Richie’s front. Richie’s gone past _hug_ all the way to a _snuggle_ , and Eddie can’t even bring himself to complain about being the little spoon, because -

He’s tense for a beat, maybe two, and then he lets himself relax. Richie is so warm, the heat of him bleeding through Eddie’s shirt at the back, until he could maybe convince himself that even the metal parts of himself are less cold than they were. Richie’s arms are solid around him, his breath tickling Eddie’s hair with every inhale and exhale, and knowing that Richie won’t let him go is the excuse that Eddie needs not to fight it.

“See,” Richie says into Eddie’s ear, a little smug. “I knew all this time you just needed a hug to get that stick out of your ass, Eds.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie grumbles, but he doesn’t move. They watch the next broadcast like that; curled up together, warm and comforted, and every time Eddie feels Richie breathe, he thinks, _we’re both alive. We made it._

-

When they were thirteen, there had been an alien on the station, and Eddie thinks that he’d been the most scared out of all of them.

To be fair, it was a shitty space station - the U.S.S. Derry was the kind of falling-down junk that had been forgotten by everyone else in their system, it felt like. Mike had had a theory that maybe the first settlers on the station had been like, criminals or something, because Derry was fucked up in a way that nowhere else seemed to be.

They saw it on the holo-net; the amount of deaths on their station, the weird, fucked up things that didn’t get reported. Stan said that maybe they didn’t get reported anywhere, that maybe everyone was in the same fucked up situation as them - well, maybe they were, but Eddie had a feeling that they weren’t. The station just felt like - fucking _poisoned_ or something, like maybe there was something real bad in the vents, like a gas or something.

Eddie had spent his whole life, it felt like sometimes, waiting for The Bad Thing to happen. It felt like something would happen - like asthma or breaking his arm and he would think, _this is it. This is the Bad Thing_. Except then he’d get a breathing implant or his arm would be held in gel and the bones repaired and it would turn out that it wasn’t something that was going to affect the rest of his life. Which wasn’t a relief, because all that meant to Eddie was that The Bad Thing was still on the way.

He would hole up in his room, reading books upon books on old Earth diseases, things that they thought were eradicated now, on the station. Even though the U.S.S. Derry had the highest rate of disease and death, it was mostly dumb stuff - illnesses that could be fixed, people floating themselves after going for ill-advised space walks, and a whole lot of stuff that happened behind closed doors, the kind of things Eddie didn’t realise weren’t accidents until they went back there.

He’d read about epilepsy and seizures, about cancer and cystic fibrosis and MS, and he just felt like his whole life was ticking down until one of them hit him. Something bad, something he couldn’t recover from - something that would change the rest of his life.

He’d been so obsessed with illness that he never saw the fucking clown coming.

Because the first time they all saw it, the alien was a clown. They’d only figured that out after, because there weren’t many clowns in space. Richie had always said he wished there was, which was fucked up - on was enough, and Richie could go on about all the weird stuff he wanted, but one clown was more than enough for the rest of them. For Richie too, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

But then it had wised up or like, updated it’s systems, like, accessed it’s cloud save or hacked into their Pads or whatever you wanted to call it. Call _It_ , because while they’d been pretty sure It was an alien, it sure as shit wasn’t one any of them had seen in their school books.

It had been a leper, to Eddie - something old. It hadn’t updated for him; looking at the pages of reuploaded medical journals on his Pad, that kind of made sense.

“It might not even be an alien,” Stan said hopefully. They were all in Richie’s pod, because he was one of the only ones who didn’t have fucking insane parents. Richie was stretched out across the floor, his toes touching his bunk. Bevvie was on the bunk, hanging upside down, his hair brushing the floor. Ben was next to her, staring at his feet, his face already bright red and then Bill, Mike, Stan. Eddie.

“It’s sure as shit not really a clown,” Richie said. “It’s the weirdest motherfucker _I_ ever saw, I know that much. Imagine being an alien and stuck looking like _that_.”

“We are aliens to It,” Mike said, as if _that_ was useful. “It might be - trying to communicate with us.”

“It spat blood up into my sink,” Beverly said. “My dad couldn’t even see it.”

“That’s why it might not be an alien,” Stan said. “It might be gas, like Richie said.”

Richie pumped his fist, in a ‘victory!’ sort of way. Everyone was very determinedly _not_ looking at him - even Eddie - and Richie reached out and jabbed Eddie hard in the side.

Eddie jumped and twisted away, scowling at him. “Fuck off, Richie.”

Thirteen was the age of popping a boner at fucking anything - one time Eddie had got horrifically hard just looking at the the shuttle docking into the landing bay - and even thinking about Richie was bad enough. Eddie hunched over, hoping this wouldn’t be one of those moments.

“No, but did you hear that? Stan the Man just said I’m right. I knew I was the smartest one out of you losers.”

“I said _might_ ,” Stan said. He frowned at Richie, his little pointed face all narrowed eyes and angles. “I just think - I’ve never heard of an alien that can materialise invisible blood and looks like an old clown.”

“You’ve never heard Eddie’s mom screaming my name and yet that’s what happened to me last night,” Richie said, and then it was _his_ turn to yelp when Eddie elbowed him in the side. “Jesus! That’s no way to treat your new step-father. I’m going to send you off-system.”

“Beep beep,” Beverly said, making an upside-down face at them.

“It doesn’t always look like a clown,” Bill said. Eddie jumped; he’d forgotten that Bill was convinced the alien was mixed up with his brother’s death, somehow. He felt twitchy all the time, these days. “It looked at me like it was Georgie.”

Eddie looked at Richie, then looked away again. He didn’t know what to say to that. Sometimes he thought that none of them did, but then Mike - or Ben - and Eddie was just left feeling a little stupid and a whole lot angry. It wasn’t _fair_ , for Bill to just drop that in when they were having a nice time -

He peeked sideways at Richie’s face again. Richie had his face screwed up, like he was trying really hard not to say anything.

“So it can shapeshift,” Ben said, reliably taking control of the situation again.

“Or it’s hallucinations,” Eddie said. “From a gas.”

“A gas!” Richie said, and this time he bumped his whole shoulder into Eddie’s, even as Eddie squirmed away and glared at him. “I’m right! Even Mr Spagheddi says so!”

“I’m not saying you’re right, don’t put words in my mouth, asshole,” Eddie said. “I think it’s a shapeshifting alien, and maybe it has a gas as well. I don’t know! None of us do!” He could vaguely hear his voice reaching a higher pitch, but he didn’t know what to do about it. “There’s a shapeshifting killer alien with a fucking hallucinatory gas on this - this fucking space station, which, by the way, is _full_ of germs, like I don’t know when the last time somebody even _tried_ to disinfect these corridors is - and it’s coming after us and we can’t do anything about it!”

He stopped, gasping for breath, and started to reach around for his inhaler. It was old tech - _really_ old, and Dr Keene in the med-bay said that no one even _had_ asthma anymore, not with the recycled air and genetically improved lungs they all had - but he’d still found this in one of the archives, and it was the only thing that seemed to help, sometimes.

Richie reached over, unzipping the bag at Eddie’s waist as Eddie was fumbling to get a grasp on it and pushing the inhaler into Eddie’s hands.

“I just saved your life,” he said solemnly, even as Eddie was taking a hit - and oh, thank _fuck_ , he could breathe again. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Eddie squawked out, the minute he could take a breath, and he was vaguely aware of Beverly rolling her eyes on the other side of the pod.

“Shut up, idiots,” she said. “Let’s think about this for a second. The grown-ups sure as shit aren’t going to do anything about this, and It’s coming after _us_.”

“We’re going to die,” Eddie said faintly, but Richie bumped into his shoulder again and didn’t move away this time, leaving the warm weight of his arm there to reassure Eddie. 

“We’re not going to die,” Beverly said. She was looking around at them all, like she was checking that they were still listening - as if Beverly Marsh would ever lose anyone’s attention. Ben and Bill were looking at her like she hung the moon, and sometimes Eddie thought that maybe he was a little bit in love with her himself. “We’re going to figure out a way to stop it, and then bam.”

She punched a fist into the palm of her hand.

“We’ll kill It.”

-

It’s hard, living together on a tiny space station - it hurts in the way that Eddie knows he shouldn’t like. It hurts in that bright, blinding, incandescent way - the way that Richie’s ship had looked when it fell to the station - like someone stuck a sparkler in his heart and lit it.

Eddie knows this pain, grew up with it, even if he didn’t know it at the time - the kind of pain that you welcome, because it means that you’re still alive, and you still love. This pain is the price that he pays to be around Richie, even after Richie left him, even knowing that Richie can’t love him the way that he loves Richie - it’s worth it most days, to see the way Richie smiles, his real one, small and private, when he can’t help it or gets a real, reluctant laugh out of Eddie - the way Richie looks first thing in the morning, with his hair stuck up in tufts at the back and his old fashioned thick fucking spectacles on - to have a new part of Eddie, with his arm and his metal plates, and be able to fall in love with something new about him after all these years.

It had been worse, on the ship. After twenty seven years of not remembering, and suddenly there was Richie - looking like a fucking clown himself, and it was embarrassing how much it did for Eddie - and there was Eddie, and there they were on a ship full of four other people. The fucking - _hormones_ and the tension, Jesus, Eddie couldn’t get away from Richie even if he’d tried because Mike and Bill were making fucking doe-eyes at each other over piles of research, and then there was whatever Ben and Bev had going on. There was nowhere to escape it.

So Eddie had shared a pod with Richie, laying above him in his bunk bed - Eddie was convinced that the top one would fall on him in the night if he slept in the bottom one, and he could _hear_ Richie struggling not to say some shitty obvious top/bottom jokes that came to mind - and desperately trying not to listen to Richie breathing, thinking about how he was right there.

And then he’d get hard, and that was just - because he couldn’t touch himself, not in the same pod as Richie, not even if Richie was asleep. It just seemed - terrifying. If Richie found out, if Richie woke up and heard him - Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about the leper, about being diseased in a whole new way that hadn’t occurred to him as a kid, but was something he could put a name to now.

Also, it was like, probably _incredibly_ fucking unhygienic.

It was a very exquisite, specific form of torture. 

Sometimes, Richie would tap on the bottom of Eddie’s bunk and say, “Hey, man. You can’t sleep either?”

And _that_ was bad too, because then they’d lie there together, one above the other, and they’d say things to each other - about the past twenty seven years, mostly, but not about - never about Myra, or whatever Richie had going on back home. But apart from that, you could say anything - or you could believe that you could, when it was dark, and there was no eye contact, just the shared space of two people who were fucking terrified about what they were on their way to face, and yet it was still less scary than the prospect of going back to the shitty fucking lives they had before.

It wasn’t fair and he knew that. He shouldn’t be wishing for Eddie’s unhappiness - he should want him to have been loved. But Richie wasn’t fair. He had never been.

It should still be harder than it is, though. All the difficulty comes from Eddie - but it’s not hard to be around each other. The two of them, rattling around the tiny space station - it feels natural. Normal, even. It feels like something is slotting into place.

When Eddie had gone back - when they’d all piled into the Jade Orient together and set off for the U.S.S. Derry - their memories had come back, too. _Exposure_ , Bev had said knowledgeably, as if she knew any more than the rest of them did. It didn’t matter what the reason was. 

It had felt like this: a flower blooming in the cracks of the sidewalk. Eddie hadn’t felt like his missing memories were holes or - even really _missing_. He had felt whole before they returned, but just unhappy. He’d been lacking the motivation to do better; convinced himself that any issues he had with his life, with Myra, were _his fault_ \- and in a way, they were. It’s not - he’s not against that.

But the memories had pushed their way in, bubbled up and forced things aside to make room - his wedding day being pushed aside for his memories of desperately trying to get Richie’s attention, pushing his way into the bunk that was meant for one; his promotion at his job being pushed aside for the time they’d all tried to go on a space walk together, and Ben’s mom had found them, pulled them all back inside and started dragging the suits off them as they all giggled together in a pile.

That was what having Richie around felt like now. There wasn’t space for him, but it didn’t matter - things were making room for him. The routines of Eddie’s life were stretching and changing to accommodate him, and Eddie wasn’t even mad about it. It wasn’t - easy, but it felt right.

Marrying Myra had been _easy_ , giving into the bottles and the pills and the fear they had both shared - that had been easy. It wasn’t her fault - Eddie had been in it as much as she was, the both of them together, learning codependency. And when it came down to it - falling into the same tracks that he had lived in with his mother, that had been easy.

Nothing about his new life was easy - the metal arm had made sure of that. Nothing would ever be easy again. But Eddie, for all his fault, had never shied away from hard work when he knew it mattered - and everything about his new life with Richie mattered. To him, at least.

He still wasn’t sure what mattered to Richie.

-

It had been like this, the second time around: Bill was the captain, because of course he was. _That_ , at least, was never in contention. He was also the pilot - Bill had been flying too big hoverbikes around the station since before Eddie had first met him. Then Mike had been the second-in-command, and Bev had been the co-pilot. That left Eddie to be the navigator, Ben to be the engineer and Richie - 

Richie had never quite been anything official. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t needed him, all the same. He’d kept them sane, after all. It was impossible to take anything too seriously with Richie around; they couldn’t get too caught up in the _we’re all going to die_ of it all when Richie was busting an impression of some old Earth comedian, or making his millionth fucking ‘your mom’ joke.

Eddie felt like it was scarier, the second time around. It had been scary the first time, of course; so scary that at one point he’d been legitimately worried he was going to shit his pants and the rest of them would never let him live it down. Actually, even as an adult, that was a little bit of a worry.

But this time it was different - Eddie felt more scared for his past self, who had so much to lose and so much potential. He had a life to live that could have been different than the one he ended up with, and on that space ship, flying to do a second time what they hadn’t quite finished the first, Eddie felt like he should apologise to his younger self.

I’m sorry that I was scared, even after you thought we won; I’m sorry that I married Myra, because she was safe, because we wrapped our fears around each other like a security blanket; I’m sorry I never told Richie how you thought you felt at the time.

There had been less to lose, at the beginning. Eddie wanted to live, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go home alive. It was only when he saw Richie again, when he remembered how alive Richie and the Losers had made him feel, that he had realised what kind of life he _could_ lose - a potential future, stretching out ahead of him.

When he had been stabbed by IT, it had felt a little bit like relief: he had proved that he was not scared, and that the bad things would happen, and he had told Richie _I fucked your mom_ because he’d hoped that would say everything that he wasn’t sure how to.

When Eddie had woken up in the bed alone, it had been like losing his memories all over again.

-

Some days are worse than others, having Richie around in the confines of the station - especially when Eddie hasn’t quite worked out how he feels about him yet. It’s a constant source of frustration, especially with how maddening he finds it being half-metal, like his feelings should be like that, too; mechanical, clinical and clean.

It’s just so _easy_. They slip into a routine like it’s always been there.

“You get up too early,” Richie says one day. “You know we’re in space? Time is literally a construct. Can you see a sun, because I can’t.”

“There’s an artificial sun,” Eddie says, “which you’d know if you hadn’t broken the lighting system in _your_ pod - not even your pod, the _guest_ pod, which I am so kindly letting you stay in after you crashed your shitty ship onto my station!” 

“It woke me up too early and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off,” Richie says and Eddie - already furious, his hands already closing into fists, says - “It woke you up at _ten in the morning_. I set it late for you on purpose, you piece of shit.”

“A construct,” Richie says. “It woke me before I chose to be woken, Eddie, my love. What was I supposed to do?”

“Ask me how to turn it off, for starters,” Eddie says. “For someone that probably did better than all of us in classes, I really don’t understand how you’re so fucking stupid sometimes.”

“A skill,” Richie says, “a gift,” and Eddie says, “No, I think it’s laziness and you don’t even bother to try.”

“I try at lots of things,” Richie says. He looks stung, for a moment, before it passes. “I tried to get myself all the way here, and I succeeded.” 

“Well done.”

“I know I didn’t do anything last time,” Richie says, suddenly fierce, “but I can do stuff.”

“What?” It feels out of nowhere, but that’s Richie - a sudden burst of sincerity and then eager to pretend it didn’t happen, that he doesn’t have depth, that he’s just ol’ Trashmouth, what you see is what you get.

“Nothing,” Richie says. “Never mind.”

“No, come on,” Eddie says. “You can’t give me a hard time about not using my words when I wanted a fucking hug and then clam up all of a sudden after something like that. What do you mean you didn’t do anything? Are you talking about when you saved my life?”

“I don’t mean that,” Richie says. “I mean, I did, but I didn’t. It was only because you saved my life first.”

“Oh, so you wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t saved your life?”

“No, I wouldn’t have _needed_ to.” Richie stops and exhales loudly, frustrated. He tips his head up to the ceiling and Eddie watches the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. If he put his hand on it, it would be warm - he would feel the muscles moving beneath Richie’s skin.

Richie drops his head back down to look at Eddie properly, and Eddie tries not to blush.

“On the ship,” Richie says, “or before, even. You’re the navigator, Bev was co-pilot, blah blah blah, everyone has a role except Trashmouth Tozier who can’t do anything right. Can’t be trusted.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says. “First of all, as mentioned, you saved my entire life, second of all, are you forgetting the bit where I freaked out over a goddamn alien spider hallucination with Stan's face and couldn’t fucking _move_ , so I think you saved my life _twice_ , also, you’re perfectly capable of navigating or piloting or whatever - don’t give me that shit about the ship, I know you crashed it on purpose, you fucking idiot - and finally, you kept us all sane!”

“Bold of you to assume any of us were sane,” Richie says. “I’m pretty sure it was folie a deux a le six.”

“That’s not a thing,” Eddie says, “and don’t think I can’t tell what you’re doing. I’m not that easily distracted.”

“You absolutely are,” Richie says, “and all I need to do to get you started is like, ask your opinion on my pre-Pennywise stand up. The second time, I mean. The homophobic stuff, is what I’m getting at.”

“You know what I think about that and it won’t work,” Eddie says. “Do you really think - we couldn’t have done it without you, Rich. I mean it.”

“We did it without Stan,” Richie says quietly. “You don’t think it would’ve been easier - if it had been me, instead of him-”

“No,” Eddie says. He means it, and Richie can hear that. There’s a raw edge of honesty when he says it which even makes Eddie uncomfortable, and it came out of his mouth.

Sure, in some ways it might’ve been easier with Stan - God, Eddie wishes he’d been there. But the thought of Richie doing what Stan had done - Eddie can’t even comprehend it. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to fight - it would’ve meant that he, Eddie, had already lost. There would have been much less to fight for, that’s for certain.

Which isn’t to shit all over Stan. God, Eddie feels like such an asshole, even thinking it - like he wouldn’t do anything to get Stan back. Anything, as long as it didn’t mean losing Richie.

“I missed you,” Eddie manages to say. He swallows; his throat is dry. “You are important. I wanted you to be there when I woke up.”

“Uh,” Richie says. “Sorry, this is - totally not the right time for this, but could you say that again?”

“You didn’t even listen to me?” 

“I’m sorry,” Richie says desperately. “But I was waiting - I waited - I never _heard_.”

“Why would I call you when you dumped me on a planet and _left_?” Eddie says and Richie says, “Because I _asked_. And I didn’t just dump you and leave!”

“You-”

“I didn’t ditch you and _go_ ,” Richie says. It’s almost a shout but not quite, the last of his self-restraint going into the volume of his voice. “I waited. I wanted - I needed to know if you were alive. If you’d survive. How do you think you got here? You just passed out and woke up on a - a fucking illegal cyborg surgery planet by accident?”

It’s embarrassing for Eddie to admit that he’d never once given a lot of thought to how he’d ended up there. There had been so much going on - he’d woken up with his life changed, his body changed - Myra waiting for him, horrified, her hands over her mouth at the sight of him, eyes wide. It had been like waking from a nightmare into a double nightmare, and he’d been sick - he’d felt violated.

There had been so much that at first he hadn’t even realised no one was with him, apart from - her. And after that, once he found out that Myra had been there and had left, had gone back to her parents’ middle-of-nowhere planet, and Eddie had spent the last of his credits on a beaten up tiny station that he could anchor to a burned out moon’s orbit - it had been a lot. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, at last. “I didn’t - think about that.”

“You didn’t _think_ about it,” Richie says. He turns away from Eddie, pushes his hands through his hair and turns back to face him, in a frustrated twirl. “You didn’t - I couldn’t think about anything else, but you didn’t _think_ about it.”

“Well, there was a lot to think about,” Eddie says, hotly defensive in the way he only ever gets when he knows, deep down, that he’s probably wrong.

“Well, how about you let me recap for you,” Richie says. “We fought a giant fucking space alien. You got your arm ripped off and you got _stabbed through your chest_ \- which, by the way, rocketed to number one on the ‘top ten most traumatic things I’ve ever seen’ list, and you remember the brief period of time where said alien was _dosing us with hallucinatory gas_. Like - I saw some _shit_ , Eds.”

“I remember,” Eddie says. “Leper. I got it.”

“Multiply that by one hundred and you’re still nowhere close,” Richie says. “Jesus, Eddie. You fucking _died_ , in front of me.” _In my arms_ , he doesn’t say. Eddie’s not sure if he imagined that bit.

“I know,” Eddie says. “I was there.”

“No, you weren’t,” Richie says. “You lucky asshole got to lose consciousness, which is basically first prize. A blessing! I _wish_ I’d lost consciousness!”

“Oh, I can arrange that for you,” Eddie snaps. “Do you want to get to the point anytime soon? Just because I’m half metal doesn’t mean I can’t die of old age before you get there.”

“Fuck you,” Richie says, and scrubs his fists over his face. He’s _not_ crying. “Fine, okay. You were bleeding out and I - I heard a guy, I know a guy. I took you there, I waited - I made sure you’d lived and I even called Myra-”

“You called Myra?” Eddie hears his voice like it doesn’t belong to him; still quiet, almost deadly. “What did she say?”

“Say?” Richie says. “She said a whole buncha things and then she fuckin’ showed up here and told me where to go. And I get it - I mean, I don’t, I’m not _married_ , thank fuck, can you imagine, worst husband of the year award right here-”

“Richie,” Eddie says, and now his voice is soft. Careful. “What happened?”

“She came,” Richie says. “And she told me - your wife was here, and you didn’t need me anymore. And she was right - I’ve seen Ben, and Bevvie, and people don’t - want a third wheel hanging around, not after surviving a life-threatening experience. And - okay, fuck _me_ , okay, but I didn’t want to fuckin’ watch that. I’m a lot of things but I’m not a voyeur, I have _some_ standards.”

He stops, and Eddie takes a breath. His human palm is throbbing, and there’s a buzz starting to build in his metal arm that can’t be good.

“I asked her to tell you to call me,” Richie says. “Just one thing. Just so I could see - for myself - that you were okay. That you’d survived.”

“She never told me,” Eddie says. “I never even knew she came, until she told me.”

“Wait, she _left_ you?” Richie says and Eddie covers his eyes with his arm - his flesh one, his human one - and says, “Sort of. Yes. It’s complicated.”

Myra had found the space station. She’d come back and had taken one look at his arm, as though she could see it, even though Eddie was still trying to cover it up with long sleeves and gloves.

“I can’t,” she’d said finally. “I love you, Eddie-bear, but this is - it’s just - it’s disgusting.”

And Eddie couldn’t - how could he condemn her for giving a voice to what he was thinking? They had been the same, him and Myra, that was why they had been together - both terrified of The Bad Thing, both doing what they could to ward it off, to isolate themselves from any possibility of it happening.

And now that The Bad Thing had happened, now that Eddie was - not even being dramatic - an abomination - how could he expect Myra to stick around? She’d left the med-bay - he was impressed, in spite of himself, that she’d shown up at all. She hated leaving their tiny planet, using the cheap shuttle they’d bought in case of emergencies and never used.

People weren’t supposed to be metal. Robots and droids were one thing and people were another - to see the two together, it seemed like an unholy union. It could lead to anything - and it wasn’t even a religious thing, Eddie wasn’t religious - it was just this great sense of wrongness, evident to anyone who saw it. 

They don’t finish the conversation. Richie had been so - so defensive, so utterly certain he was in the right, and Eddie can’t reconcile it - can’t put the way he felt waking up alone side by side with Richie saying that he had to leave, and he just can’t see how Richie left him, unless Richie thought the same thing Myra did. He can’t _understand_ it.

He had thought - well, never mind what he thought. But if you loved someone, you wouldn’t just leave them. Eddie’s pretty convinced on that one.

-

Stan had known. Eddie wasn’t sure how, but he’d known maybe even before Eddie had. It was weird - Eddie hadn’t thought that he was particularly close to Stan. He followed Bill around, of course, like the rest of them did, couldn’t help blushing if Bill said something like ‘Good job!’ but that didn’t mean anything. Richie had said once, half-joking, that all of them had a first crush on Bill - the awkward silence that followed had only confirmed it.

Eddie liked hanging out with Beverly, even if sometimes he worried about getting on best with a girl. Maybe it meant that he was a queer, like, one of the bad ones, that had lisps and his mom said were diseased. Maybe he was just a pussy, like Bowers said; whatever you thought about it, being best friends with a girl didn’t really say anything good about you.

Beverly, Eddie reasoned, wasn’t really much of a girl, though, especially once she cut all her hair off. She lived on the side of the space station that was a little more broken-down than the rest of it, so that meant she was pretty tough. Probably tougher than Eddie, even, although he knew that wasn’t hard; Eddie was scared of everything.

But there were so many things to be scared of.

He was scared when he realised that Stan knew, even when he wasn’t really sure what it was that Stan knew, only that it was something that Eddie was keeping a secret and holding close to himself.

They’d been on the observation deck, which didn’t really get much traffic. Usually the Losers would hang out on the bottom deck, which was empty and mostly filled with junk, and Ben was building a shack or something connected to the vents - this was before the theory about the alien, of course. But this time, Stan had said that he wanted to look out the window and see if he could recognise any of the stars, and Eddie was more than happy to go with him.

Looking at stars was a past-time that he figured even his mom couldn’t really disapprove of; you couldn’t hurt yourself looking out of the window, and it didn’t really say anything about you or your character. Plus, his mom approved of Stan as much as she approved of anyone: she thought that Bev was a slut and she _hated_ Richie, which of course lent the idea of hanging out with him some extra appeal. But Stan’s dad was a Council member, and even his mom had to admit that was sorta respectable.

Looking out of the window was all well and good until Eddie remembered that being out there would literally kill you, and in fact _had_ killed people, and then he had to turn away and tuck his feet under the rail. He could feel Stan looking at him but he looked at his own feet, so he didn’t have to meet Stan’s eyes.

“I know I’m a baby,” he said. “Even Ben’s braver and he got cut up by Bowers.”

Stan folded himself down next to Eddie and Eddie dared to sneak a look at him; Stan looked solemn and thoughtful, the way that he always did.

“I don’t think you’re a baby,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong if you don’t like looking outside.”

“I do, sometimes,” Eddie said, because he didn’t want Stan to think that Eddie had lied just to come along with him. Eddie might be a lot of things, but he didn’t mind saying when he didn’t want to do stuff, obviously. Even if he usually ended up doing it anyway. “I just can’t help thinking of - you know. People getting floated. What if we saw a body?”

“They close the observation deck when they float,” Stan said. “The windows, I mean - big shutters come down so you can’t see out.” He glanced at Eddie, and shrugged a shoulder. “Richie says so, anyway. He says he went to look one time.”

“Richie’s probably lying,” Eddie said, pleased that the conversation was back on more familiar ground. “He’d throw up if he ever saw a body. Bam! Vomit everywhere. Totally gross.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re right,” Stan said, and they shared a smile. Eddie’s heart was slowing down, which was good; he didn’t think he’d need his inhaler. It was embarrassing, using something like that; it was so old that he knew people thought it probably didn’t work anymore, but it still helped.

“You talk to Richie a lot,” Stan said casually, and this time Eddie took another glance at him.

“Yeah? So? He talks to everyone, he never shuts up.”

“I know,” Stan said. “Annoying, right?”

“Right,” Eddie said, and wished fervently that he couldn’t feel his face heating up the way it always did when he thought about Richie. It wasn’t _fair_ , it didn’t happen with anyone else - not even Beverly, and he’d looked with the rest of them when the pipes had overheated that time and they’d all stripped down to their underwear.

“But if you didn’t think he was annoying,” Stan said. “That would be okay, too.”

“He’s not always annoying,” Eddie said. “He’s just stupid.” He felt bad. “Well, not really. He _acts_ stupid.”

“He really does,” Stan agreed, and that seemed to be the end of it. Still, Eddie felt what Stan was saying, even if he didn’t understand it.

He still thinks about that - he’s thinking about it now. Sometimes Eddie doesn’t think about Stan for days at a time, and then he remembers, and the guilt is almost as bad as the grief. It’s not something that you ever get over, losing somebody like that; Pennywise had killed him sure as if he’d been there himself, holding the knife. He might as well have been.

-

“You have got,” Eddie says now, “to be fucking kidding me.”

Richie spreads his arms wide like the worst fucking _who, me?_ expression that Eddie has ever seen.

“If I didn’t want to kill you before, I sure as shit do now,” Eddie says. “How did you even do this? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t do it!” Richie says. “I just - woke up and went to use the bathroom and came back and it was like this!”

‘This’ is half the ceiling of Richie’s pod on his bunk, which is currently split in half due to the sheer weight of the impact, Eddie can only assume.

Eddie folds his arms across his chest and frowns. He really hates metal - and the worst of it is, it probably isn’t even Richie’s fault. He can see there - a few spots where it’s rusted, where there are weak points that were just waiting for this, and -

“Oh, God,” Eddie says and gropes for the desk chair, manages to lower himself into it. “You could’ve been in it - you could’ve fucking _died_ , Richie.”

Richie’s face does something complicated that Eddie can’t quite make out - for someone with an incredibly expressive face, sometimes he can be really hard to read - and then he kneels in front of Eddie, reaching up to pull Eddie’s hands away from his face.

“I could have,” Richie says solemnly, “and you have to admit, it’d be pretty fucking funny if I survived everything that we went through to get taken out by your piece of shit space station.”

“It’s not a piece of shit!” Eddie snaps except yeah, there’s a pile of shit on Richie’s fucking bunk - he can’t help it, he feels like he can see it, one vision layered over the other, Richie on the bed, a piece of metal splitting his head open. Eddie doesn’t know about the cyborg planet - wouldn’t be able to get back to it, doesn’t know who to reach out to - but even if he did, if that pile of junk had landed on Richie, it would be too late.

“Maybe we should upload your consciousness into the AI,” he says before thinking and then, refusing to even look at Richie, “no, I take it back, that’s a fucking stupid idea.”

“Hey,” Richie says, and he squeezes Eddie’s hands a little. For no reason at all, Eddie thinks about the summer they were thirteen, when it felt like Richie was touching him constantly and Eddie was worried all the time he was going to get a fucking hard-on.

He’s over forty now, Eddie tells himself resolutely. Just because Richie’s hands are warm - and then he remembers his own metal hand, all over again, and goes hot and cold. At least it’s a boner-killer, he thinks miserably.

“Hey,” Eddie says. His voice doesn’t crack, so that’s at least one point for ‘not being in puberty’ anymore.

“I’m not dead,” Richie says. “Neither are you. We both survived it. As I keep saying, I will not allow us to get taken out by your shitty fucking station. I want to die in a blaze of glory. No, wait, that’s not funny enough - I want to die on the shitter, with my pants around my ankles, in a blaze of erotic auto-asphyxiation.”

Eddie finally remembers to pull his hands out of Richie’s and brushes them off on his pants. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” he says. “With rust. Replace the whole part? Sand it off?”

“No one should ever have sold you a space station,” Richie says, standing up. “You’re not a responsible owner. Which honestly surprises me, because you’re so fucking neurotic I thought you’d be cleaning the entire thing with a toothbrush every other day.”

Eddie must make a face at this because Richie blinks and says, “Wait, _do_ you clean the whole thing with a toothbrush and I’ve just never noticed? Is it before I wake up because if it is, you should tell me, I will totally get up earlier if it means I get to watch you scrubbing on your hands and knees. Do you wear those tiny shorts from when we were kids? Please tell me yes.”

Eddie doesn’t even remember what happened to those. They probably got put in the incinerator, with everything else that he didn’t save when his mom died.

“No,” he says instead, and for good measure, “Jesus Christ, Richie, we were about fourteen. That’s fucking disgusting.”

Richie squawks. “I wasn’t into you then! I mean, I was, but only in the way that fourteen year olds were. I’m saying I want to see _grown up you_ in tiny shorts, I’m not a fucking sicko.”

Eddie wants to stop, wants to raise an eyebrow - just one, because he knows it drives Richie insane that he can do that and Richie can’t - and say, _you were into me?_

But there’s - it’s too much, the past tense. Eddie doesn’t think he’d be able to stand it if Richie brushed it off like it was nothing, said _yeah I was, funny, right?_ like it’s the best joke he’s ever told. He’s pretty sure that would happen - even more sure that his own voice would give him away, that instead of being deadpan and cool, Eddie’s voice would crack, and show Richie just how much he wants it still to be true.

Eddie remembers more about when they were kids now than he ever did before. Maybe the gas killed some of their brain cells and they took time to regrow - maybe it really was just a magic alien - either way, they’ll never know, and Eddie doesn’t really like thinking about it. He puts _possible brain damage_ in the same box as _Stan floating himself_ , and _Richie in the deadlights_ \- out there in space without a mask or helmet on - and he locks it all away. Sometimes he wants to add _augmented illegal body_ to it, but there’s no point - it’s something that he can’t get away from, even if he avoids looking in mirrors.

“Yo, this is fucked up,” Richie says. He’s moved out of the guest pod into the cubicle, and he’s frowning at the mirror. “Why are all your mirrors so dark?”

Eddie blinks and turns. “It’s a setting,” he says. “See-” He reaches out to the dial, turns it so that the mirror brightens and reflects. “You can fix it.”

Richie peers at it suspiciously. “Mine weren’t like that.”

“They had the dial,” Eddie says. “You just clearly didn’t fuck around with it.”

“Why would I need to?” Richie says and Eddie rolls his eyes, says, “Oh, like that ever stopped you before.”

“No, I don’t mean _that_ ,” Richie says, “although honestly I thought I’d touched everything in there that I could. Like, why would you need a dark mirror? You understand the point of mirrors, right, Eds? You’re supposed to be able to see yourself in them.”

“Not always,” Eddie says. It sounds way more cryptic than he meant it to and Richie’s eyebrows shoot up behind his glasses as he folds his arms. Eddie tries not to watch the way muscles cord across Richie’s arms - Richie definitely isn’t like, a picture-perfect image of health, but his arms are… nice. That’s all.

“‘Not always’,” Richie repeats. “Is this some riddle bullshit? ‘When is a mirror not a mirror, when it’s in Eddie’s fucked up space station.’”

“I don’t like mirrors,” Eddie snaps, then stops, breathes. It would be so easy to pretend that there’s a reason for this that Richie would understand - Bill had gotten stuck in a mirrored corridor in the holosuite when they’d been back on the U.S.S. Derry, he had seen a kid die there, and Eddie could always say -

But that’s not something they do, anymore; if they can’t be honest with each other then they’ll never be honest at all. Eddie is done with lying to himself, and lying to the Losers feels an awful lot like lying to himself at this point.

So he takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t like looking at my - at the metal, okay? If I don’t have to. I don’t like seeing it. Is that okay with you?”

“I didn’t - of course it is,” Richie stammers, like that reason had never even occurred to him, and Eddie rolls his eyes, feeling a flash of jealousy.

“I wasn’t actually asking your permission.” It’s not fair, that Richie doesn’t have to think about it - about what happened to Eddie, when Eddie has to face every single day, even if he doesn’t want to.

“I know,” Richie whispers, then shakes his head a little bit, like a dog getting out of water. “I didn’t mean - I know you weren’t, obviously, I don’t think you’ve ever asked anyone for permission in your entire fucking life.”

Eddie thinks of his mom then, with another flash, like all the shitty things in his life are just lining themselves up to parade in front of Richie - Richie, who looks really fucking good in spite of what he thinks, who is a known name on the holo-net, who has a career and a life now.

While Eddie’s here, half-metal on a space station, and he’s lost the one aspect of his life that he thought he’d done right. That he’d done because it was something, at least - he couldn’t have done that badly if he had money and a marriage, after all.

“God,” Richie says. “You’re really fucked up, aren’t you?”

Eddie rolls his eyes again but hugs himself tight, feeling uncomfortably exposed. Of course Richie would know - Richie had probably known the minute he landed, just by looking at him, and maybe that’s part of the reason that Eddie went to ground and avoided all the others. He didn’t want any of them to know.

“I’m sorry I’m not like the rest of you,” he says, louder than he means to. “But I didn’t get to just fuck off to a vacation planet or do a galaxy tour, okay? Good for you guys being successful-” and he means it “-but I’m still - I couldn’t get over this. Fuck you.”

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Richie says. He doesn’t come towards Eddie, though he looks like he wants to; instead he just stays where he is, leaning against the wall by the bathroom mirror, his hair sticking up where he’s dragged his hands through it. “I’m fucked up too, buddy, we all are. You think Bev and Ben came out of this with no mental scarring for life? You know that’s not true.”

“Then why did you say it like it’s some big surprise?” Eddie says and Richie reaches up to rub his eyes underneath his glasses, says, “Because it was. I thought - you do a really good job of seeming okay.”

“I’m wound so tight I think I’m going to snap at any minute and I spent seven cycles in total isolation without talking to any of you,” Eddie says. “What part of that seems okay?”

“Okay, no, when you put it like that,” Richie says. “It’s just - you’re the most capable person I know. I just assumed you had it together, okay? I’m sorry, I just didn’t think - that you’re like the rest of us.”

“Well, I am,” Eddie says. “Now you know.” He takes a deep breath, then says, “I thought you’d remember.”

“Remember what?” Richie says, looking surprised. “That you have a problem with mirrors? You never used to.”

“Not that,” Eddie says. “Being fucked up. I wasn’t - honestly, it was always you who seemed the least.”

Richie gives a hollow laugh. He pushes off from the wall and seems to realise at the same time as Eddie does that there’s really nowhere else for him to go - outside of the mirror and Eddie’s gadgets, there’s just the pressure pod. It’s a small cubicle that they’re in, and they’re standing closer together than Eddie thinks Richie meant to.

“I was so fucked up,” he says. “I was having a gay panic, like, 99% of the time, and the other 1% of the time there was a clown trying to kill us. Sometimes those overlapped like the shittiest Venn diagram in the world.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Eddie says. “And at home - you had-” _Both your parents_ , he wants to say. _A relatively normal home life. No mother, lying in wait to love you to death. You lived without the guilt that hit you both ways; guilty for wanting to play out with your friends, to be a normal kid, guilty about staying in the house with your mom and giving in to her, guilty for being upset that she loved you enough._

“I did,” Richie says. He jams his hands in his pockets, looking too large for the tiny room, his head almost brushing the ceiling. It’s almost comical, except for how miserable he looks. “But it’s not a competition.”

“Jesus, I’m not comparing,” Eddie says, irrationally mad all of a sudden. “You’re saying you didn’t think I was fucked up as an adult, well, I’m just saying I didn’t know you had all of that going on as a kid.”

“Good,” Richie says, “because I worked _really_ hard to hide it, and if it hadn’t worked then I could’ve been out and proud a lot sooner.” He strikes the kind of flamboyant pose that he used to make in his comedy sets, before all this, and Eddie winces in spite of himself. “What?”

“Well, you know, I’m,” Eddie says, wondering furiously why this conversation had to happen in the tiniest fucking cleaning cubicle of all time. “And I just - before I remembered it was you, I hated when you did that. It made - me feel… bad,” he finishes, lame.

Hurt flashes across Richie’s face so fast that Eddie almost misses it before he turns away, inspecting the dial by the mirror in the most obvious change of subject possible.

“You know, it didn’t make me feel great either,” he tells the dial. “Fuck, I know I hurt so many people with that shit, okay? I did so much damage, and I know it’s not fair that I get to come back from it either, like most people - it’s peak 3000s white guy, okay? I know that. But I can’t - should I give up my whole career? I don’t fucking know, maybe I should. But I don’t _want_ to. I’m pretty sure that makes me a bad person. I know that. But I can’t bring myself to do anything about it, either. Okay?”

“Hey,” Eddie says. He manages to close the distance between them, enough to rest his forehead on Richie’s shoulder. It’s probably not the best move, but it’s the only one he has in him right now. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Well, it’s true,” Richie mumbles. Eddie feels him rest his forehead on the top of Eddie’s head; he’s pretty sure that Richie’s crying right now. It’s the only reason he’d be resisting making a short joke. “I fucked up and I haven’t even paid for it.”

“We lost Stan,” Eddie says. “We lost a lot of things, actually. Our entire childhood was pretty fucked up, you’ve been repressing some serious shit for years. It’s not like you got a free pass.”

“It feels like I did.”

-

It’s only when they’re about to go to sleep that Eddie remembers. He turns to see Richie in the doorway of the guest pod, looking sadly at the junk that neither of them bothered to move off the bunk.

“Shit.”

“‘Shit’ is right,” Richie says. “I should’ve gone to the vacation planet with Bev and Ben.” He shrugs a shoulder - Eddie tries not to be struck by how tall he is, all lanky angles and shoulder - and turns to face Eddie. “You’ve got blankets and stuff?”

“What?” says Eddie. “Why?”

Richie rolls his eyes, jamming his hands into his pockets like _Eddie’s_ the idiot. “So I can sleep on the couch.”

“The couch,” Eddie says. “Oh, fuck off. You can’t, your feet will hang off the edge.”

“It’s not my fault you bought a tiny couch,” Richie says, and starts to say he’ll push the armchair over to the end of it even as Eddie’s saying, “It’s not _my_ fault you’re a fucking - _ladder_ , the couch is long enough for a normal person.”

“A _ladder_!” Richie howls and Eddie can feel himself turning red, says, “Shut up, no, that’s not what I meant - you’re a - an Earth giraffe or something, I don’t fucking know, you’re just tall and fucking - _thin_ -”

“Thin!” Richie says. “Well, Eddie Spaghetti, thank you for the compliment.”

Eddie’s not sure if he’s red or purple. Sometimes he wishes his whole face had been replaced with metal, so at least it wouldn’t give him away in moments like this. 

“I mean as opposed to Ben,” he says, because for some reason he’s still _talking_ , despite everything in his brain currently screaming SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP at him. “Ben’s like - big - but you’re more - okay, whatever, shut the fuck up, Rich, don’t think I can’t see that you’re laughing at me.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just fascinated by your mastery of the English language,” Richie says. “Honestly, really, it’s - you’re a literary genius, and I never knew.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie says, frowning. “I was going to say I’ll take the couch but now I want to see your stupid giraffe legs hanging off it.”

“I don’t even know what a giraffe is, so that won’t work on me,” Richie says, still grinning. “Practically illiterate.” 

“You came top of the class, don’t think I don’t know that,” Eddie snaps. “The whole ‘I’m an idiot’ routine is really fucking tired, no wonder you hate your own stand-up if that’s your level of humour.”

“That’s probably above the level of humour I showed in my stand-up,” Richie says thoughtfully and Eddie rolls his eyes so hard he thinks for a moment that he’s strained a muscle. Instead of bothering to reply, he heads over to the storage unit with the spare blankets in and pulls them out, until he has an armful of clean fabric.

“Get into my bed,” he says, and over the top of the blankets just manages to see Richie turn white, then red, then stutter, “Wh-what?”

“Okay, _Bill_ ,” Eddie says, then feels bad - it’s one thing Richie making fun of Bill’s stutter when Bill’s around to hear it, it’s another thing for Eddie himself to use it as a cheap shot. “Shit, sorry - not to you, to Bill. That was mean.”

“Oh, _that_ was mean,” Richie says, getting his voice back. “You’ll call me a fucking giraffe-legged idiot ladder for ten rotations around the sun, but the minute you make one crack about Bill’s stutter, _that’s_ too far?”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, and pushes the blankets into Richie’s arms. “Make up the couch for me, if I’m sleeping on there then you can at least get it ready.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “So when you said ‘get into my bed’-”

“I meant you’re taking the bed,” Eddie says. “Obviously. Jesus. I’m average height for a guy and it’s not going to be great for me, but you’ll wake up with a broken back if you try it.”

“‘Average height’,” Richie repeats and Eddie almost growls, “Shut the fuck up right now or I’m just going to put you in that piece of junk you called a spaceship and throw you off the side of the station myself. You make it really fucking hard to be nice to you, you know?”

“Oh,” Richie says again. “I know.”

“I don’t-” Eddie cuts himself off. He’s at the point of wanting to tear his hair out and the worst of it is that it’s the best he’s felt in cycles. Fuck, he loves Richie so much and it’s so hard - he wants to do or say nice things, but they all seem to get twisted on the way out of his mouth and he has to spit them out like bullets. Jesus. What a fucking mess.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “It’s my fault that I’ve got a bunk that fell down, anyway. I could’ve killed you, I shouldn’t be being shitty about this.” He holds out his hands for the sheets. “I’ll make up the couch, you go to sleep.”

“I need less sleep than you,” Richie says, clutching the sheets to his chest. “I didn’t mean it, I’ll take the couch.”

“Didn’t mean _what_?” Eddie says, then pushes down the wave of frustration that he’s trying to be nice to Richie and it’s lasted approximately five seconds. “You didn’t even say anything. I’m the asshole, let me take the couch.”

“No, _you_ end the chat first,” Richie says, and tosses the sheets onto the couch. “This is stupid. Your bunk’s massive, we can just share. I don’t want to spend all of tomorrow listening to you bitching about your back, or whatever.”

He says it casually but Eddie can read him well enough to know that _something’s_ making him uncomfortable. For the first time in his life, Eddie doesn’t want to push it. Now that Richie’s put it out there, it’s all that Eddie can think about - sharing the bunk. He wants to. Maybe not like this, but he can pretend - if he wakes up first, he can wake up to Richie.

That would be… nice. 

He waits for Richie to use the cleaning cubicle first, and Richie’s already in the bunk by the time Eddie gets there, the sheet almost pulled up to his shoulders. Eddie’s about to get in beside him, when he remembers. Shit.

“I can’t sleep with a shirt on,” Eddie says to his feet. 

“Hey,” Richie says, uncharacteristically quiet. “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain it.” He makes a face like he’s thinking and then says, “Uh, I did - take my shirt off. It’s hot. I can - we can adjust the temperature, if you want, I can-”

“I’ll go back to the couch,” Eddie says suddenly, all in a rush. “This was a dumb idea and you’re a guest, anyway, even if you’re the worst fucking guest I’ve ever had in my life-”

“I’ve been here five months,” Richie says. “I think I’m past guest status.”

“Well, if you’re not a guest then you’re a shitty roommate seeing as you haven’t contributed to anything while you’ve been here.”

“I have contributed the pleasure of my company,” Richie says grandly. “People pay to hear me talk, and you’re getting it for free, Eduardo.”

Eddie bites back an _I hate you_ and shrugs a shoulder instead. “Can you - not look at me?”

Richie opens his mouth to say something, then seems to change his mind. Instead, he rolls over onto his side, facing the wall while Eddie strips off his shirt and holds it on one hand. God, he’s not sure he was this scared when they faced the alien - the thought of climbing into bed next to Richie - next to Richie _with his shirt off_ , all hot, bare skin - Eddie swallows, his mouth dry.

“Hey,” Richie says, to the wall. “You doin’ okay there, Eds?”

“Fine,” Eddie says. It comes out hoarse; Richie thankfully doesn’t comment on it. “The bunk just looks smaller.” He bites down on the urge to comment on Richie’s size again; it had been humiliating enough the first time. It’s just that Richie _is_ big, bigger than Eddie (he can admit it) and it’s really hot. He’s broad, with big hands that Eddie could imagine spanning his hips - and he’s taking up a lot of the bunk, enough that they might wake up pressed together.

Eddie’s mechanical heart keeps beating at regular speed. It’s the first time he’s been thankful for a metal body.

-

Some nights - most nights, if Eddie’s being honest with himself - his bedtime routine changes. Actually, if it’s ‘most nights’ then Eddie supposes that this _is_ his routine now, but he’s still hoping that’s not the case - that he’ll go back to normal after long enough, somehow.

He uses the machines to clean his teeth, his body - closing his eyes, so he doesn’t have to see the reflection of the metal in the mirror. That’s part of it - Eddie desperately wants to get used to it, in the way where he also doesn’t. It’s not - he doesn’t want to _have_ to get used to it, to make peace with some of his body being displaced. It still feels like it’s missing, the replacement not quite matching up. Worse than that - the replacement is obscene. It’s illegal. Eddie has spent his whole life following the rules, so it feels cosmically unfair for him to get struck down like this.

And that’s where the routine comes in - Eddie gets ready for bed and then he just - sits on the edge of the bunk. He sits on his made bunk, hospital corners and all, and just - he can’t get into bed. He can’t do it.

It sounds so fucking stupid, but he wants to be able to wear a pajama shirt again. It’s okay during the day, for some reason, but at night - Eddie doesn’t know if it’s lying down or rolling over or the sheets not going well with the fabric, but the first few mornings he would wake up to loose threads caught in the joins, sometimes tangled up with the machinery inside.

It felt - wrong, to pull them out. Eddie would close his eyes and grit his teeth every day, but it felt like - touching your eyeball, is the closest comparison.

And so he sits on the edge of the bed, head in one hand, the flesh hand, trying to just - make his peace with it. It’s unhealthy to mope and feel sorry for himself, and he knows it, but he just can’t come to terms with the fact that a line has been crossed with this, and it’s one that he can never uncross.

That’s how Richie finds him. Eddie forgot that they were sharing, now.

“Um,” Richie says. Eddie doesn’t look up, but he feels the bunk sink as Richie settles in next to him. “You alright there, Spaghetti? Because not to judge, but I feel like you’re having a midlife crisis or something which, to be fair, would be right on time. On the other hand, I feel like your entire life has been a crisis.”

“I can’t wear a shirt anymore,” Eddie says again, then clarifies, “at night, I mean.” He knows he’s already said it, but it’s just - he doesn’t want Richie to feel uncomfortable. Also, he’s kind of stuck on it, in his own head.

“Yeah, you said, but I didn’t ask. Are you a werewolf?” Richie asks interestedly and Eddie frowns, says, “I’m opening up to you, asshole, don’t make jokes.”

“Oh yeah, open wide, baby,” Richie says, and Eddie can feel his whole face tightening, shutting down. Some of it must show, because Richie immediately reaches out to touch him says, “Hey, no, I’m sorry. You’re super ripped and can’t deal with wearing a shirt anymore, I totally get it, I have the same problem.”

“You won’t understand,” Eddie says. “It’s at night, the metal.”

“Try me.”

“It’s like touching your eyeball,” Eddie says and Richie rolls his eyes and says, “Oh yeah, because I’ve got no fucking idea what _that’s_ like.”

“You had the correctives,” Eddie says and Richie says, “Fuck, Eds, you really don’t remember? The -” he’s gesturing wildly with his hands now, and Eddie dips his head to avoid one of them. Richie has big hands - “the gas, it fucked with my eyes, and it’s alien gas so good fucking luck fixing _that_ in Derry’s shithole of a med bay” - and his fingers, too - this isn’t anything.

Eddie’s just fascinated with hands and fingers now that he has 50% less than other people.

It’s funny - he can know objectively that he’s fucking mad for Richie, in the most obvious, humiliating way that someone can be, and he still wants to lie about to himself. It’s just - Eddie flops back on the bed and covers his face with his hands, not giving a shit for once that one is made of metal.

“Well,” he says to the ceiling. “That explains the glasses, I guess.”

“‘That explains the glasses’,” Richie says disbelievingly. “You thought I was just wearing coke bottles for fun?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I don’t know why you do anything you do. You’ve always been-” and he stops himself before he can say _a mystery to me_ , because that’s not entirely true. It is and it isn’t. He knows Richie - knows the way Richie looks when he’s making a joke because he think it’s funny and the way he looks when he’s saying it to cover up an insecurity.

He likes to think that he knows Richie _now_ ; knows him in a way that he didn’t when they were kids. But he doesn’t know why Richie left him, and he doesn’t know why Richie is here now.

“Hey,” Richie says, after a few minutes. “You’re stuck in your own head again, Eds. C’mon.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Eddie says. He lets himself look at Richie - Richie, with his glasses off and on the ugly metal shelf by Eddie’s bed, vulnerable in a way he seems comfortable with. Eddie can’t imagine ever being comfortable with that - he feels vulnerable all the time, like a bug on its back, exposing the soft underside of its body ready for someone to come and squish it.

“I know,” Richie says, and Eddie lets himself slide into the circle of Richie’s arms. He doesn’t think about what it means; resolutely refuses to think about the fact that Richie is touching his metal.

They sleep like that every night, now; they never talk about it in the morning.

-

They aren’t always just sniping at each other or having painful, over-emotional conversations, of course. There wouldn’t be much to it if they were - it’s just that those are the moments that Eddie regrets. He wishes he was nicer - he doesn’t think he was like this when they were kids, but it’s hard to tell. The memories are still coming back. He worries that some of them are gone forever.

Richie’s on the couch, watching something on the holo-net. It’s easy to sit down next to him, shoulders close enough to touch. This is part of what Eddie loves: how easy it is to be with Richie. How much he enjoys him saying _anything_ , at all.

Part of what makes Eddie such an asshole to Richie is the desperation that if he isn’t, Richie will stop looking at him. He knows he’s not like this with anyone else: it makes it seem obvious, like he’s wearing a big sign that says I LOVE YOU, ASSHOLE.

If he is, Richie doesn’t seem to be able to see it.

But part of what Eddie loves is the fact that he _can_ be that asshole with Richie. It’s - reassuring, to be able to be the absolute worst version of himself, show the worst parts, and know that Richie doesn’t hate it. When Eddie’s being a total asshole, it just slides right off Richie. He guesses that Richie’s used to dealing with hecklers, and maybe Eddie isn’t so bad in comparison.

Or, more likely, Richie can just see right through it.

“What are you watching?” he says and Richie shrugs the shoulder leaning against Eddie’s.

“I don’t know, it was just on. Hey, remember when we found that old-Earth movie? Jesus, we were way too young to watch that. It fucked me up good.”

“You said it was the least scary thing you’d ever seen in your life,” Eddie reminds him, and Richie grins at him, says, “Yeah, I had nightmares for like a week after.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says. “Me too!”

Richie laughs, going back to watching the TV and Eddie frowns, remembering. “You said you weren’t scared at all,” Eddie says. “You called me a baby.”

“Yeah, I was a little shit,” Richie says. There’s something in his lap that Eddie doesn’t recognise, and he frowns at the unfamiliar tangle of coloured threads.

“What’s that?”

Richie’s face does a complicated thing, like he can’t quite decide whether he wants to hide it or be proud of it. Eddie’s familiar with that exact look; it’s the same one Richie makes after making a particularly shitty joke, or the first time they found one of his stand-up sets on the holo-net.

“Let me see,” Eddie says, and he reaches over to grab at the threads, but Richie pulls them out of his reach.

“No. You’ll ruin it.”

“I might do, if I don’t even know what it is,” Eddie points out - very logically, he thinks. “C’mon, I thought we were over keeping secrets.”

Richie’s face does something else, something that Eddie can’t quite read this time, but then he shakes out the threads. It looks like knitting or something, in what’s supposed to be a delicate pattern but instead just looks kind of tangled together.

“It’s crochet,” Richie says. “I’m making you a doily.”

“A what the fuck?” Eddie says. “Are you okay? Is this a mid-life crisis?”

“Your station is the most depressing space I’ve ever lived in,” Richie says, “and we lived on a space station that had a fucking alien-clown in the vents. It is so beyond bare, it’s not even like someone doesn’t live here, it’s like someone wants to make sure no one _ever_ wants to live here.”

Eddie opens his mouth and closes it again. He can’t argue with that - he never wanted to be here as much as he didn’t want to be anywhere else. Decorating this piece of shit wasn’t at the top of his list while he was stewing in his own feelings about his disfigurement.

“So you decided to take it upon yourself to do this?” Eddie says. “Instead of, I don’t know, bringing it up to me?”

“Aw, Eds, I’m just trying to help,” Richie says and beams at him, like he’s decided pride is the way to go.

Eddie doesn’t say anything else, but he starts seeing the evidence of Richie’s shitty crocheting - and shitty taste in colours - laying around the space station; some weird-ass orange and purple tapestries on the walls, the tangled up doilies on every surface Richie can find.

Still, it’s nice in a way - seeing evidence that someone else lives here, and he gets to use to sitting on the beat-up couch with Richie in the evenings, watching TV and hearing the quiet clack-clack of the needles.

-

Eddie wakes up one morning and starts to untangle himself from Richie, as usual. The cooling system in the ship has been on the fritz for a while now; alternately too hot or too cold, and he feels like he’s melting in the heat. His arm doesn’t like it either, whirring louder than usual, and Eddie feels furious every time he hears it - an audible reminder of what he hates.

Richie wakes up this time - or at least, sits up. Eddie doesn’t know if Richie’s been awake or not in the past, or if he’s just been pretending to be asleep. Eddie assumed the latter, but who’s to say. Either way, he tightens his arms around Eddie.

“Where you going?”

“Uh,” Eddie says. His mouth is dry, suddenly; he blames the cooling system. “I need to get up. We can’t all just lie around all day doing nothing.”

“You could if you wanted to,” Richie says. He still sounds half-asleep - he’s always been the opposite of a morning person. Eddie remembers seeing him on the ship, on the way to what they thought was their death: it was his favourite thing to see Richie stumble out of his bunk in the morning, his hair looking more of a mess than usual. 

“Yeah, and then the station would be falling apart even more than it already is,” Eddie says. He tries again to pull out of Richie’s grasp, but Richie’s surprisingly strong despite the fact that both of his arms are flesh and blood. “Richie, let me go.”

Richie swallows - Eddie watches his Adam’s apple bob with fascination - and then says, in a hoarse voice, “No.”

“No?”

“No,” Richie says again, his voice a little bit stronger this time. “I need to talk about this - we both do. For fuck’s sake, Eds, we’ve been spooning for weeks now.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says, a familiar flash of white-hot anger, and then, “Fuck you, it’s not spooning. You just want to make me the little spoon and I won’t let you.”

“Oh my God,” Richie groans. “It’s not fucking about that, Jesus, but yes, you’re the little spoon. You’re literally smaller than me, it’s the only way we fit.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says again. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. He doesn’t even know why he’s picking the fight, other than the fact that he can feel his heartbeat thudding at the thought of having the other conversation with Richie, the one that he knows Richie was trying to have.

“Well, it’s not the conversation starter I was going for, but sure,” Richie says. He’s still holding tight onto Eddie, and Eddie’s letting him. “Why don’t you?”

Eddie resists the urge to say _fuck you_ again and tips his head back instead, staring at the ceiling. He thinks about pretending to not know what Richie’s talking about, but it’s early and he’s tired and it just seems - exhausting, suddenly.

So he tells the truth.

“You left me,” Eddie says. “That’s what it comes down to, for me,” and it’s easier than he would’ve thought, as though the words have been living on his tongue for months and all he has to do is let them into the world. Which is a fucking stupid metaphor, but whatever. It’s not as though he’s saying _that_ out loud.

Richie lets go of him suddenly, like all the tension’s released from his arms, and Eddie takes advantage of that to scoot across to the other side of the bed. It’s not too wide, but he wants to put whatever distance between them he can first, before Richie does.

“I didn’t,” Richie says, and he sounds desperate. It does something to Eddie’s metal heart, even though he knows logically there’s no way it could; like something in Eddie, even in the metal, recognises something in Richie. “I mean, I did, but I didn’t.”

“I know Myra was there but you still ditched me there-”

“I didn’t ditch you and go,” Richie says. It’s almost a shout but not quite, like the last of his self-restraint is going into the volume of his voice. “I waited. I wanted - I needed to know if you were alive. If you’d survive. How do you think you got here? You just passed out and woke up on a - a fucking illegal android surgery planet by accident?”

“I woke up,” Eddie says, “and you’d left me.” He spreads his arms wide, to try and show how lonely the room had been. Eddie hadn’t felt alone since he’d remembered them. “It was so scary - I thought you would be there. I don’t - I’m not good with words and I can’t explain - how it _felt_ -”

“Please,” Richie whispers. His eyes are dark and wide and Eddie thinks he can see tears in them; wobbling and catching the light. “You don’t understand. I told you already; I told you I didn’t leave you-”

“So _tell me_ ,” Eddie says. “Richie, you have to _tell me_ \- I don’t think - I hope I’m not crazy when I think there’s something between us - and I do - I want it, but I can’t - it can never happen if you don’t tell me.”

“Okay,” Richie says hoarsely. He draws a ragged breath in and out, pushes his glasses up into his hair and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. His hair is sticking up behind his glasses, and Eddie feels sad and affectionate all at once looking at it. “I’m going to try.”

Eddie goes over to sit on the bed next to him. Richie looks tired, suddenly, without his bravado; God, Eddie just wants to wrap him up and suffocate him.

It springs to him suddenly, and he just thinks - they replaced him with metal, so why couldn’t they replace _that_? Love to Eddie feels split in two - wait, that’s not right. It would be easier if he could separate them out; instead, it feels entwined - the way his mom loved him, the way Myra loved him, and the way that he’s trying to love Richie. He knows, logically, that what he and Myra had maybe wasn’t love, but they called it that. He had thought it was, at the time, and if it has the name of it - how is he to know? No one _teaches_ you this stuff - or worse, they do, and Eddie’s teacher had been his mom.

He shies away from that; he knows that something there was rotten, but he doesn’t want to think about it. He loved his mom the way he loves Richie now; fierce and uncomplaining, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the same. It’s just… complicated.

And like that, he gets some of what Richie’s trying to say, or he thinks he does.

“I understand complicated,” he says, and shifts over so that their arms are brushing - Eddie’s metal arm, but he can still feel it. For once, he doesn’t have the urge to move away again.

“Okay,” Richie says. He’s twisting his fingers together in his lap and Eddie resists the urge to reach out and put his hands over them. “I’m - I was -” He breathes out heavily. “This shouldn’t be so hard, I’m a fucking moron. You already know it anyway. It shouldn’t - it won’t make any difference, I _know_ it won’t.”

Eddie puts his hand on Richie’s back. Despite the fact that it’d been done in some backwater planet’s med-bay, the metal hand and arm are masterfully done. He can feel the heat bleeding through Richie’s shirt - orange, emblazoned with PROBE ME, because of course it is. And this is the guy that Eddie’s in love with. Jesus fucking Christ.

“If it helps,” he says, “you don’t have to say - that. Just - I need to know why you left. Why it took you so long to come back. I know we’ve been over it, I know you feel like you told me, I just. Maybe I need to hear it again.”

The problem is that Eddie has always lived off Richie’s attention - needs it, in a way that’s embarrassing to admit even to himself. When Richie isn’t looking at him, Eddie _needs_ him to - will do or say what he has to in order to get Richie’s attention. He’s never thought of himself as an insecure person - had always been secure with his mother and Myra - but something about Richie is just different.

Eddie feels like he constantly wants reassurance, but not even because he’s worried, just because he likes _seeing_ it, he likes hearing it - the way Richie looks at him, the smile he gets from Richie that no one else does, the way Richie nudges him in the side and whispers _you’re still my favourite_ ; Eddie takes those moments greedily and hoards them to himself.

“I’ve been scared,” Richie says, “my whole life. But I’m not scared of this. And that scares me. Do you get it? It’s so stupid, it makes no fucking sense. I want you so badly - I want this. So I had to stay away.”

“Rich-”

“And she was there,” Richie says, like he knows he’s only going to be able to say this once, and doesn’t want to stop now. “Your _wife_. God, I didn’t even know - I wanted, but I didn’t _know_. You had a wife, you were married, she was there. You were talking about divorce, at the end, but we were all - crazy, then. We’d just killed a space alien. You were bleeding out, I didn’t even know if you’d _live_ -

“All I knew was that if I walked in there, and you were alive, I wouldn’t be able to - you’d know how I felt. You’d see it all over my face. And if Myra was there, and you actually wanted her - if that’s what you wanted - it would’ve killed me, Eddie. I really think it would’ve killed me.”

“It would’ve killed me, too,” Eddie whispers. He’s not sure which of them moves first, but they meet in the middle - Eddie doesn’t even register that he’s holding onto Richie with his metal arm, Richie’s shirt bunched under his fingers, his other hand slipping up inside Richie’s shirt.

He’s always wanted it, wanted _him_ , wanted this, wanted it before he knew what wanting was. 

“I didn’t want to leave you,” Richie says. “I think I left a part of me there with you.”

“That’s pretty fucking sappy, Trashmouth,” Eddie says and Richie’s eyes go wide behind his glasses, like he didn’t realise that Eddie could joke with him too, like this.

He opens his mouth, ready to say something and Eddie knows, he just knows that whatever Richie is going to say will be a total fuckin’ mood-killer, sure as shit as if Richie’d just said it, so he kisses him instead. It’s easier, in some ways. He has to.

He expected it to be maybe a little weird - he can taste salt on his tongue, and he knows that Richie is crying, and takes a moment to think _at least he isn’t throwing up_. Richie is still, unmoving, and Eddie has a beat of _holy fuck did I read this very wrong_ before Richie moves, fast and all at once.

His mouth is warm underneath Eddie’s, and they fit together so easily that Eddie feels like he should’ve already known it. He pulls back, but not all the way; just enough to rest his forehead against Richie’s and try and get his breathing back under control.

“Wowee, Eds,” Richie says. “You’ve been holding out on me. Hey, do you think the metal heart means that you can keep going for longer?”

“I don’t think my heart affects my erections,” Eddie says dryly, and Richie closes his eyes, briefly - long enough for Eddie to admire the way his eyelashes look against his skin, dark and fanned out - before he says, “You wanna try find out?”

-

It’s easier, from there, but it’s also not. Eddie doesn’t know how to be easy and smooth; doesn’t know how to file off his rough edges so they don’t grind against Richie’s. He sort of learned that, with Myra, and he never wants to feel like that again - the spaces left by the removal of his arm aren’t ones that Eddie knows how to fill anymore.

It’s like when he’s trying to cook, and Richie’s trying to kiss the back of his neck. The food’s going to burn and they don’t exactly have enough to spare and he’s trying to _tell_ Richie that, but the more he says, the funnier Richie seems to find it.

“You can’t just kiss me whenever you like now,” Eddie grumbles. “Just because we’re in a relationship.”

“‘In a relationship’!” Richie repeats, louder. “Is that what we are?”

Eddie moves the food from the flame and turns to glare at Richie over his shoulder. “Aren’t we?”

“Absolutely we are,” Richie says, smacking another kiss to the back of Eddie’s neck. “It’s just very formal. I thought you might go for hooking up, or dating.”

Eddie actually turns around this time, hands on his hips even as he knows Richie’s laughing at him. Eddie never learned not to take the bait from Richie, too scared that someone else would if he didn’t.

“We’re in a relationship,” he says. “We’re over forty, not fourteen.”

“Ouch, don’t remind me,” Richie says dramatically, clapping a hand over his heart. “I’m so old.”

“We’re both old,” Eddie says. He’s trying to judge if he can move the eggs back over the heat, or if Richie’s going to start something up again. The eggs are probably going to end up burned either way. “I just look after myself, and you don’t. Seriously, Rich, you need to do at least some exercise.”

“I don’t and I won’t,” Richie says. He moves further towards Eddie, boxing him in with an arm on each side, hands resting on the counter. “Anyway, what you were saying before, about me not being able to do this whenever I like? You’re wrong, I can. That’s the whole point of a relationship when you’re not dating your mom.”

“Is that about me?” Eddie says, nettled, and Richie blinks.

“No, I meant that I was fucking Mrs K, but if you want it to be a hit against Myra then I can pull double-duty. My jokes are like onions, Eds. _Layers_.”

“Your jokes are shitty,” Eddie says, but Richie looks so incandescently happy that Eddie can’t stay mad; it’s the first time that he hasn’t known how to.

Richie moves on from crocheting - he probably has to, considering that every possible surface that could hold his terrible crafts is now filled. Next, he takes a stab at art, which Eddie finds out when he walks into their pod and sees something he can only describe as a nightmarish take on the Losers on their bedside table.

He starts to raise his voice to say _what the fuck, Richie?_ but swallows the words down before they come out, remembering that weird mix of pride and embarrassment that Richie had shown with the crocheting. Instead, he sits down on the bunk and picks it up to look at it properly.

It’s incredibly shitty, not that Eddie could do a better job, probably, but the more he looks at it, the more he can see the care which has been taken. He’s not sure what Richie was using to make it, maybe charcoal, and he’s always been obsessed with weird old-Earth mechanics.

Still, it’s nicer than a holo, he has to admit. He can start to tell who’s who, the more he looks at it - Bev is easy to spot, with her hair, and Mike, and then he can see himself and Richie, Ben next to Bev, Bill next to Mike and then - Stan.

There are holos of the seven of them as children, and a few of the six of them as adults, but for obvious reasons, they never got one of the full Losers club, all grown up.

Eddie feels a lump develop in his throat and realises to his horror that tears are starting to prick at his eyes. He will not cry over Richie’s terrible attempt at art. He point blank refuses to.

It takes a few moments and then he manages to get himself under control; he replaces the picture and goes into the other room, curling up next to Richie. He even lets Richie curl himself around Eddie, which usually he hates, because it just feels like a dig at his height, even as he knows that’s irrational.

“I liked your picture,” he says eventually, when he feels like he can speak and keep himself under control. Richie stiffens, but doesn’t pull away.

“Yeah?” he says casually. “I’m not really an artist. I’m not _trying_ to be, I just thought - keeping myself busy. I think - It’s easier to come up with new material and stuff when I’m tricking my mind into thinking about something else. You can throw it out, if you want.”

“It is pretty shitty,” Eddie says, because he’s never been a good liar. He’s never really wanted to be, never saw the point of learning how - Eddie has always been more than happy to tell people exactly what he thinks. “I like it, though.”

It’s not a metaphor for anything. It’s just something that’s nice to have around - the picture. But Richie’s pretty great, too.

-

Eddie’s happy himself for a little while, a few weeks, and then the doubts set in. It’s not fair - he should get to be happy. He’s been through enough. But then he feels selfish when he thinks that, and he starts spiraling. He tries to deal with it on his own for a day or two, and then he gives in and calls Bev.

“I’m sad,” Eddie says, miserably. “I don’t want to feel sad.”

Bev shrugs a shoulder. She’s wearing an old shirt of Ben’s; it slips down, and her shoulder’s bare. She looks more than beautiful - she looks happy. She looks _free_.

“So don’t.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

“Only because you’re making it hard for yourself,” Bev says. “Unless you’re telling me that Richie makes you sad?” It’s Eddie’s turn to shrug a shoulder; Bev rolls _her_ eyes. “Eddie.”

“Fine, he makes me happy.” Eddie injects it with as much sarcasm as he can, because sincerity is something that he and Richie never quite figured out. “I’m _happy_.”

“But you said you’re sad.”

“You said I shouldn’t be.”

“Oh my God,” Beverly says, but she’s laughing. “Eddie, get it together.”

Eddie takes a deep breath - in through the nose, out through the mouth - tries to sort through his feelings to get them to make sense. He can usually - Beverly’s choosing to misunderstand him. Out of all the Losers, it’s the two of them who are drawn together more often than not, having had experiences that resonate. Eddie doesn’t want to pretend that with Myra, or his mom, that it was the same as Beverly and Tom, or even similar - but they’ve both gone through divorces, and it’s been a struggle. So. He’ll take it.

“I feel like I’m going to lose it,” he says eventually. “And I’m so scared that I’m going to lose it, then I’m going to hold on too tight. I don’t know how to…” He runs out of the words here, isn’t sure what he’s going to say. _Be gentle_ , is one, but he settles on - “Love him properly.”

Bev softens, leans further int. He can see a red line on her cheek where she’s slept against the pillow - his heart clenches suddenly, and he reaches out before he can stop himself, drops his hand before he touches the holo.

It’s stupid, but it’s always thrown him - reaching out to touch something that isn’t really there.

“This isn't like the love we've had - before. We both know that love isn't enough; that it has to be the right kind of love. But Eddie, you know how to love Richie,” she says. “You’ve been doing it since you were thirteen.”

“But I don’t _know_ how to do it right,” Eddie says, frustrated. “I don’t want to - to suffocate him-”

“Eddie, honey,” Bev says. “Maybe you need to tell _him_ this.”

He won’t. That’s not how they work - Eddie knows that, knows that it wouldn’t work even if he tried. He and Richie are never going to have Ben and Beverly’s soft, golden relationship, full of communication and kind eyes. Eddie wouldn’t want that even if it was offered to him - would feel claustrophobic and trapped.

He can’t tell Richie. But he can do his best, anyway. Because the alternative is letting go, and Eddie can’t do that, not even if it would be the right thing to do.

“Hey,” Richie says, appearing in the doorway like Eddie’s summoned him. He doesn’t usually interrupt when Eddie’s on a chat, the same way Eddie doesn’t. It can be hard to find privacy on a space station and there are still so many things that they don’t know how to say to each other - this is the least that they can do, while they get used to it.

“Hey,” Eddie says. “Bev, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure,” Bev says, and she looks a little sad as Eddie ends the call. 

He swivels around in his seat to look at Richie instead; takes a moment to really drink him in - the way his hair still sticks up at the back, the thick glasses that seem like a remnant of Earth times, his entire lanky frame - and all of it for Eddie.

“Hey,” Eddie says. “What’s up?”

“They want me to do a planet tour,” Richie says, and looks at Eddie sideways, like he wants to see his reaction but not face it full on.

“Okay,” Eddie says, like the bottom hasn’t fallen out of his stomach. “If you…” He stops. He doesn’t know what else he’s going to say. Richie can’t give up his job, obviously - Eddie isn’t that stupid or idealistic or whatever you want to call it - but he doesn’t love the idea of Richie leaving him, either.

Planet tours last for at least five cycles. It’s a long time for Richie to be gone.

Eddie starts again. “I can’t go with you,” he says, and knocks on his metal arm with his flesh hand. “Not like this. They’ll float me the first chance they get.”

“You never did let me know if that thing has a vibrate function,” Richie says teasingly and Eddie flushes hot, then cold, and says, “That _thing_ is my arm.”

It’s a dumb argument to have, especially because Richie knows that Eddie hates it, still, will probably always hate it - that he _does_ think of it as a thing, as a lump of metal attached to him - but it hurts more coming from Richie. It’s a jab in a sore spot Eddie didn’t even know he had - or at least, not that it would sting that much.

“Hey,” Richie says. He’s moving closer to Eddie, stroking his thumb up and down the metal of the arm. The thing is - it _feels_ just like it would if Richie was touching his skin, his flesh, and that seems unfair. That from the inside, Eddie can’t even tell the difference. “I know. I didn’t mean it was a thing.”

“It _is_ a thing,” Eddie says miserably. “It’s just also my arm.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Richie says. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Eddie doesn’t want Richie to leave him either - he wants to say _quit your job and stay here_ , he wants the two of them to live out the rest of their lives in this weird self-isolation. Well, maybe the others could come and visit sometimes.

But Eddie knows how his mom loved him, and Eddie doesn’t want to suffocate Richie. Is _terrified_ , actually, of suffocating him - of draining him of everything but Eddie, until their lives revolve around each other more than they do already - at the expense of everything else.

-

“I don’t know what to do,” Richie says. Eddie can see him - Eddie’s hovering in the doorway, watching Richie on the holo to Bev. Her hair’s grown out, down past her shoulders, and she looks - well, she looks like she’s laughing at him, obviously.

Eddie feels something fierce and warm in his chest, even though they _all_ fucking laugh at Richie, obviously. And Bev’s allowed, as much as any of them - God, something about seeing Richie fucking miserable just makes Eddie want to punch him in the face. It’s so fucking _stupid_.

Bev catches sight of him first and rolls her eyes, pushing her hair over one shoulder.

“You’re both stupid,” she says and it’s so close to what Eddie was thinking that he flinches back a little, stung. “C’mon, loser, get in here.”

Richie glances around to see him and holds a hand out, as though he’s not sure he’s allowed. It’s Eddie’s turn to roll his eyes and he heads over to him, perching awkwardly on Richie’s knee. He needs to get another chair in here.

“I can fix this,” Bev says, “and you’d both know that if you actually communicated like adults instead of becoming hermits off-planet for months.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Richie protests. “We all forgot our childhoods, our growths were stunted.”

“Speak for yourself,” Eddie says, shoving Richie so hard he almost falls off the chair.

“I can make you a glove to fix it,” Bev says. “Just slip it on over your metal and it’ll look like a re-” She catches herself. “Like a flesh and blood arm. I promise.”

“Aw, Spagheddi,” Richie says, nudging his shoulder against Eddie’s. “You’re gonna be a real boy.”

-

“I’m not stupid,” Eddie says. “I know you -” He catches himself, doesn’t say love me because he isn’t even sure if that’s true. Says instead, “I know how you feel about me.”

Richie goes white, and then green, so quickly that it’s kind of impressive. Eddie watches curiously, trying to seem a little detached, to hold onto some of his dignity. Just enough that it isn’t written all over his face just how _he_ feels about _Richie_ , and why it just about killed him when he woke up and Richie wasn’t there.

“I don’t,” Richie says quickly, then blanches again. Eddie slides an old ration crate over to him with his foot, just in case. He’s not sure why he’s so calm about this - it’s something about Richie, where sometimes Eddie feels like he exists in opposition to him - calm when Richie is freaked, and vice versa. Always loud when Richie is loud, though.

Richie scrambles off his seat and kneels over the crate, but all that comes out is a burp. He flicks his gaze between the crate and Eddie so quickly that Eddie can’t help it, slides off his own seat and kneels opposite Richie, with the crate in between them. If Richie actually throws up in it, Eddie can’t help but realise, this is going to be pretty fucking gross.

“I get why you left now,” Eddie says, after it becomes obvious that Richie just wants to stare miserably into the crate instead. “I didn’t, at the time. It - it almost killed me, Rich. More than the arm did.”

“I didn’t _want_ to,” Richie says, at last. “I didn’t - hurting you is the last thing I would want to do.”

“I still don’t know if it means I just want to follow you around, Rich,” Eddie says. He’s trying not to sound sulky but judging by the look on Richie’s face, he’s failing. “I’m not an Earth wife.”

“But you’d look so adorable in a little apron and bonnet,” Richie says, coming over to try and pinch Eddie’s face while Eddie slaps him away.

“You know what,” Eddie says suddenly. The idea’s struck him, bright and out of the blue - like Richie’s ship, all those cycles below. “We’ll just have to get married.”

It’s worth it for Richie’s expression; mouth open and gaping, blinking rapidly. Something in his eyes catches the light - Eddie leans forward and grabs Richie’s face with his metal hand, turning it this way and that.

“Are you _crying_?”

“Yes,” Richie says roughly. He doesn’t pull away from Eddie though. “You just asked me to _marry_ you, what the fuck.”

“Do you - do you not want to?” Eddie says hesitantly. He hadn’t thought about that - he hadn’t even _asked_ , really, just assumed. It just seems like it would fix their problem - he wouldn’t mind Richie leaving him as much if he knew that Richie had to come back, if there was something between them.

And with Bev’s glove, Eddie can even get his own life back, his own job - so there are options for him that aren’t just following Richie around or waiting for him to come back.

“Yes, I fucking _want_ to, Jesus,” Richie says, swiping at the tears under his eyes.

“Wait,” Eddie says, suddenly struck with horror. “We can’t.”

“What the fuck?” Richie says. “If this is some really weird joke, then you have no room to ever talk shit about _my_ comedy.”

“I don’t mean that,” Eddie says. “I mean - you don’t want to.”

“Now you’re telling me what I want?” Richie raises his face, tear-stained and pale and furious. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Eddie, I swear to God, I’ll kill you. And if I do it before we’re married, I won’t even be able to rock the ‘hot widow at her husband’s funeral’ look, and you know I look good in black.”

“I’d know if you ever took off those god-awful patterned shirts that look like a technicolour alien threw up on them, sure,” Eddie says. “Your entire wardrobe is like, an affront to my eyes, it looks like you bought it on a planet where people are colourblind.”

“Maybe I did!” Richie says. “You can’t stop me! Not if you don’t even want to marry me anymore!”

“I _want_ to marry you,” Eddie says. “Jesus fuck, I’ve no idea _why_ , but for some reason I want to marry you, you asshole.”

“You don’t get to call me an asshole when you’re the one trying to do take backsies on a proposal,” Richie says. He’s standing now, furious and miserable by turns, hands jammed into his pockets. “It’s really cruel and you’ve been a lot of things but I didn’t think you were cruel. Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you? I asked you before but can you give me a goddamn straight answer?”

“I’m trapping you!” Eddie says. “This is what I do. I proposed to Myra because I was too scared of being alone-”

“ _That’s_ why you proposed?” Richie starts, but Eddie keeps going, too scared to let him finish.

“And I’m so scared of losing you, this is what I do - I don’t know how to love someone normally, okay? And I love you so fucking much - not like that, not like her - and I can’t lose you, I don’t want to let you go. I want to marry you, I want you to be stuck with me - and I am so scared that I’ll choke you.”

“Maybe I’m into that!” Richie snaps. They both fall silent for a moment, assess what Richie’s said - colour floods back into his face, reddening his cheeks. “Not like that. Well, maybe, I’ve never - you know, it’s not the time. Stop fucking distracting me, Jesus.” He pushes up his glasses to rub his eyes.

“I meant metaphorically,” Eddie says helpfully. “I don’t want to metaphorically choke you.”

“Yes, fuck you, I got that,” Richie says. He lets his glasses fall back into place. “I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m not great at being loved normally, either. I am so scared of people leaving me or changing their mind. I don’t _want_ to leave. I want to be stuck with you so badly I crashed my ship into your shitty fucking station so I couldn’t leave.”

“I _knew_ you did it on purpose,” Eddie says, vindicated.

“Did you ever think,” Richie says, gesturing between them, “that maybe we’re both fucked up in ways that match? And,” he adds, “I already told Mike and Bill that we’re getting married, so you can’t go back on it, because that would just be embarrassing.”

“How?” Eddie asks, a little stupidly. “We’ve been arguing this entire time.”

“You have so much to learn,” Richie says, slinging his arm around Eddie’s shoulder, and kindly ignoring the way Eddie snuggles into it - which he will never admit, if anyone asks. And if he checks the group holo-chat later, and sees that what Richie actually said was closer to _a’m getoang marieed!_ then he doesn’t mention it.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Let me try it again.”

“I think once was enough,” Richie quips and Eddie wriggles out from under his arm. He almost glares at him, but stops himself - that goes against the entire point of this, after all.

“Richie,” he starts, then goes, “Wait, is Richard, like, your real name?”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “You’re insane. I always knew you’d go mad but I didn’t think it’d happen like this.”

“Richie will do,” Eddie decides. “Richie Tozier - stop _laughing_ , jackass, I’m trying to be sincere - I have been in love with you for many cycles. Probably since we were kids, even if I didn’t know it then. We fought an alien together, and you saved my life twice.”

“Twice?” Richie says. His eyes are starting to look wet, Eddie notes with satisfaction. Sure, he’s trying to be nice and do this right, but also, if proposals were a competition, Eddie kind of wants to win. And to make Richie cry again, but not because he’s been mean this time.

“Twice,” Eddie says. “Once - obvious.” He knocks on the metal plating with a fist. “Twice, when you came to this station. I was basically dead already. I wasn’t - doing anything, or feeling anything. And now - I know it sounds dumb, don’t laugh,” he says in a rush, “but you kinda brought me back to life again. So. Thank you.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says again, scrubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. He doesn’t say anything else, just opens and closes his mouth soundlessly a few times, like a fish. “You should’ve warned me. Do I need to do that back now?”

“No,” Eddie says, and lets himself do what he secretly always wants to do around Richie - clings onto him, with enough force that Richie backs into the couch and sits down again. Eddie’s essentially on his lap - he’s not even trying to pretend that he isn’t enjoying it. “No, it’s okay, I know you don’t like talking about things.”

“And you _do_?” Richie says. His arms have come up around Eddie, but it means that his tears are still falling now. One of them falls on Eddie’s head; he tries to convince himself that it isn’t annoying. “I can do it. I can.”

“You’ll put jokes in it,” Eddie says. “Please don’t. I didn’t do it so you’d do one back.”

“I’m doing it,” Richie says. “You think my jokes are hilarious and besides, if I don’t, you’ll be saying for the rest of your life, ‘Hey, Richie, remember when I was really nice to you and you didn’t bother to be nice back?’”

-

They have a holo-recording of the wedding, but Richie draws a picture of it as well. His artistic skills are still bordering on nightmarish. Eddie keeps it folded up against his heart, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> just a reminder, please do go check out the art and leave the artists some beautiful feedback on their work!


End file.
